Home Improvement Superstore Reduces Wan Costs While Improving Network Performance
Contents
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
CUSTOMER TYPE: Home Improvement
INDUSTRY: Retail
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
- Contain and reduce WAN costs while improving performance for ERP system, PoS transactions, VoIP and a real-time video training program
- Manage high-volume NetFlow that breaks other monitoring tools
SOLUTION
Deployed LiveAction’s LiveNX to:
- Gain more network visibility
- Better manage and monitor network performance
- Automate large-scale QoS configuration
BUSINESS RESULTS
- Gained real-time visibility into high-volume end-to-end NetFlow flows
- Enhanced user experience of voice and video applications
- Improved performance while reducing WAN service provider costs
CHALLENGE
This home improvement superstore has more than 385,000 employees in more than 2,000 stores across North America. As an omnichannel retailer, it complements its 100,000 sq ft retail spaces with an e-commerce business that o.ers more than a million products for DIY customers and professional contractors.
Like many retailers with multiple remote locations, the IT department needed to reduce monthly WAN expenses while improving network performance to support the ERP system, PoS transactions, VoIP and a real-time video training program. The IT department realized that to achieve their goals, they needed improved visibility across the retail store network.
SOLUTION
After conducting extensive research, the IT team realized that running LiveNX from LiveAction over the Cisco IOS o.ered such a powerful and e.cient solution that it supported the business case to replace their existing Juniper core infrastructure.
The ease of implementing end-to-end application performance management through the single-pane-of-glass interface and the operational efficiency of GUI-based quality of service (QoS) management were critical factors in the decision. LiveNX was able to scale visibility of bandwidth and application utilization for high-rate NetFlow between the stores and the data center to a level that crashed other platforms.
RESULTS
The company deployed LiveNX across their 2,300-store network in only 90 days while maintaining normal business operations. The graphical QoS configuration and management tool accelerated configuration, troubleshooting, and resolution of performance issues much faster than manual, error-prone configuration via the command-line interface.
LiveAction responded to unique issues in the company’s network with customized features and provided comprehensive training to ensure global adoption of the solution and to maximize its effectiveness. Due to the efficiency of network management using LiveNX, the company was able to reduce their recurring network services expenses.
Engineering wanted complete end-to-end visibility for PfRv3 prior to production deployment.
“LiveNX scalability is the only product that meets our very high flow rate requirements, a problem that breaks every other NetFlow tool on the market.”
– IT Architect for a Home Improvement Superstore
About LiveAction®
LiveAction provides end-to-end visibility of network and application performance from a single pane of glass. We provide enterprises with confidence that the network is meeting business objectives, full network visibility for better decisions, and reduced cost to operate the network.
