Who's Minding the Connected Store?

There's a new network effect taking place. From inventory management to point-of-sale systems (POS) to on-site Wi-Fi networks, retailers now rely on network connections to support traditional brick-and-mortar operations and extend new services to in-store customers.

While connectivity is crucial, however, many in the retail industry underestimate how much it's reshaping the IT landscape. The online and in-store domains are converging, and retailers need a strong infrastructure foundation to ensure business operations continue to run smoothly.

In effect, retailers must now pay as much attention to the network architectures underpinning their stores as to the concrete structures that house them. We've moved beyond just physical store management. The future of retail is all about connecting the physical world with the virtual one.

Retailers as Network Operators
Retail IT operations include data center management, connectivity to and from store locations, and wireless network management within stores. If a problem occurs across any of these areas, the consequences range from mild inconvenience to a potentially major loss of revenue. Imagine the impact of downtime in a POS system during the holiday shopping season. An hour without network access could result in tens of thousands of dollars in lost sales. And the more the rate of activity on the system rises, the more vulnerable it is to a failure event.

The key to avoiding downtime, or even degraded connectivity, is performance visibility. Retailers can take control of their infrastructure by deploying monitoring systems to help identify problems and even pinpoint potential issues before there's a customer impact. Whether it's a network switch, a server or an access point, retailers should be able to see what normal operations look like and immediately know when a piece of equipment is acting outside defined parameters.

For example, the NetFlow feature on a Cisco router provides information to IT on the characteristics of the IP traffic it supports. When retailers have an efficient way to collect and analyze that data, they can create baselines for normal activity and set alerts to be triggered when a change occurs.

It's not enough, however, to track only the performance of a particular brand of routers. Retailers need to be able to monitor every potential point of failure. When something doesn't work, the source of the problem could be a faulty air conditioner in the nearest data center, a software malfunction or a deliberate attack on the local network. Only with complete visibility across all network and data center operations can companies react quickly to potential problems and pre-empt a connectivity crisis before it occurs.

Agility in the Face of Complexity
As much as network infrastructures have already grown and changed, the future for retail IT promises only more complexity as the shopping experience continues to evolve. Customer management systems will increasingly overlay both online and offline storefronts. Networks will extend to ever-more locations and devices, and consumers won't only browse on their smartphones while shopping in-store, they'll also regularly use their mobile devices to scan products for information and check themselves out with each new purchase.

The more devices get added to the equation, and the more those devices expect to be able to communicate instantly with each other, the more important the infrastructure foundation for retailers becomes. Expanding IT infrastructure has been a priority for many retailers for years, but the same attention hasn't necessarily been applied to performance management. Building infrastructure is one thing, but ensuring there aren't cracks in the foundation is equally important. Companies have to be ready to adapt as the ground shifts and as consumer and commercial expectations change.

It's not enough for retailers to set IT infrastructure and forget it; it's time to start monitoring the connected store.

Casey Murray is the vice president of marketing for SevOne, a network performance management software company.