The retail industry is transforming as businesses integrate physical and digital shopping experiences. Consumers expect fast, personalized service, whether they shop online or visit a store. To meet these expectations, retailers are investing in smarter technology to optimize operations, protect customer data, and deliver real-time insights.
As customer expectations and operational challenges change, retailers need to transform their business goals accordingly. Cloud-based technologies, like software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications, offer flexibility, scalability, and efficiency to facilitate this transformation. Yet, utilizing cloud services introduces network and security concerns, including performance issues, increased attack surface areas, and damaging data breaches. These days, it is no wonder IoT is sometimes referred to as Internet of Threats as there is a higher reliance on mobile and IoT devices, leading to higher bandwidth usage and increased data.
Businesses must be flexible to meet the demands of customers, streamline processes, and pivot to evolving business needs. Just as enterprise networks have evolved to handle and virtualize the wider distribution of data, applications, and users, the evolution of wide-area networks (WANs) takes the network edge to the next level.
