Retail Architecture Business Basics

The Cisco Lean Retail Architecture is designed to enable:

• Ongoing IT cost efficiencies
• Greater flexibility in the choice when determining whether to deploy new technology in the store, data center, or through a hosted service
• Faster deployment of upgrades and applications

To migrate to a Lean Retail Architecture:

• Where appropriate, re-deploy servers and applications from the stores to the data center
• Consolidate and virtualize data center storage and servers
• Make application availability a focus of a network-centric architecture
• Move to a network-based, on-demand services model to deliver applications, security, mobility, and voice capabilities

Migrate Servers and Applications from the Stores to the Data Center

Any application or server that can be moved from the stores to the data center, and maintain its access and performance metrics, will provide a significant cost savings in operating expenses. The cost in both time and money to upgrade, maintain, and provide patches to a server or application in every store, particularly if IT personnel have to travel to the stores to provide the service, can be dramatically reduced if the application or server resides in a data center.

The cost to open new stores or integrate acquisitions is also reduced through a centralized approach.

Consider the following criteria when determining which applications to migrate:

• Business logistics: From this perspective, you may want to keep certain applications in your stores, such as point-of-sale applications.
• Technology constraints: Due to their design or data constraints, some applications will be difficult to move from the stores, such as video surveillance.
• Integration with other applications: Depending on the location and constraints of other applications that are integrated with them, some applications could require changes in order to be redeployed.

Consolidate and Virtualize Data Center Storage and Servers

Currently, the largest costs in the data center are for storage and server growth. These assets grow, on average, 10–30 percent annually (Nemertes Research 2006) Storage and server growth also increases the energy costs of the data center.

Storage virtualization can improve the efficiency of storage utilization by 30–70 percent according to Cisco customers who have deployed this technology. That translates into long-term containment of storage and energy growth.

Further, load balancing of the data center server farm can improve the efficiency of server utilization by 30 percent or more based upon Cisco customer metrics.

Make Application Availability Part of a Network-Centric Architecture

Network reliability is a top concern when redeploying applications to the data center. The Lean Retail Architecture offers a network design that sustains high availability.

To achieve wide area network high availability, there are several issues to address:

• What type of service-level agreement (SLA) does your network provider offer?
• Does your network have an appropriate level of redundancy to minimize any single point of failure?
• Is there a business-continuity plan that enables critical, centrally deployed applications to keep running during a network outage?

Cisco is a leader in network design, and can provide you with guidance and solutions to help you achieve a high level of network reliability that enables the lower costs and improved business agility of a Lean Retail Architecture.

Move to a Network-Based, On-Demand Services Model

The Cisco Lean Retail Architecture enables business agility that extends beyond the rollout of new applications and upgrades. It includes integrated security, mobility, and voice capabilities that improve the customer experience, enable innovation, and help draw more customers.

Voice and mobility capabilities can be deployed in a distributed or centralized implementation. The Cisco Lean Retail Architecture provides you the choice of design to best meet your business needs and allow you to integrate your applications with security, mobility, and voice capabilities.

Payment Card Industry (PCI) solutions are a major concern for retailers. Centralizing and securely transmitting customer and store data is another benefit of a Lean Retail Architecture.

Should the use of a hosting service, or software-as-a-service, make economic sense for your business, the Lean Retail Architecture can help your service provider lower costs and improve performance.