As the retail market continues to evolve rapidly, the rise of e-commerce and omnichannel commerce — as well as the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic — are adding new levels of complexity to the retail industry and its operating models. Now, a white paper prepared by Juniper Research for Transaction Network Services (TNS) suggests retailers will be best equipped to face both current and future market challenges through an effective transition to SD-WAN systems.
Juniper Research’s new white paper, “Supercharging Payments with Secure SD-WAN,” discusses retailers’ need for digital transformation in the face of new retailing models — and their implications on payment networking systems — and then explores SD-WAN as a solution to some modern networking requirements and connectivity methods, including the cloud. The paper provides three key takeaways for retailers:
- Retail has changed: The shift toward omnichannel commerce has fundamentally changed the retail market, with online and offline channels merging. Retailers need access to tools and connectivity beyond what traditional solutions such as MPLS have offered.
- SD-WAN has come of age: SD-WAN has matured as a solution, making it viable for retail use as a successor to MPLS, particularly with the addition of built-in security features.
- Retailers must choose solutions that match their goals: When assessing the highly varied SD-WAN market, retailers need to choose the right vendor. This includes thoroughly evaluating security credentials and understanding a vendor’s geographic reach to ensure connectivity contracts cover essential areas.
“Our research found that retailers can reduce not only the total cost of ownership, but also the total complexity of ownership, by deploying a simple-overlay SD-WAN solution that is managed end to end,” said Nick Maynard, lead analyst for Juniper Research. “This simplicity and freeing up of resources will help retailers keep pace with market changes by improving payments acceptance, optimizing the customer experience, and offering more value-added services, such as customer Wi-Fi.”
In the white paper, beyond Juniper Research’s in-depth exploration of these three key takeaways, retailers also can expect to learn:
- The benefits of SD-WAN deployment for both retailers and customers
- How SD-WAN compares with MPLS
- How the cloud ties into SD-WAN
- Why secure SD-WAN offers stronger security credentials
- How to choose a vendor that is right for their business
“Juniper Research’s white paper found that retailers will be best positioned to meet the challenges of the modern era by investing in systems that offer flexibility, very high uptime, cost-efficiency, security, and insights without the burden of total control — but the white paper also notes not all SD-WAN services are created equal,” said John Tait, Global Managing Director of TNS’ Payments Market business. “TNS Secure SD-WAN offers retailers all of the benefits that Juniper Research highlights and more, combining PCI compliance, global connectivity, network security and spcialist hardware to create a payments networking solution for branch retail locations.”
The white paper will also be the subject of an upcoming Juniper Research webinar on April 21. Register for the webinar to learn more and download the complete white paper.
