NEW YORK — Aruba Networks, Inc. today announced that Gristede's, a leading Manhattan-based grocer serving the area since 1888, has enhanced customer experience and greatly reduced the time it takes to set up the IT infrastructure for its new stores by using Aruba’s Virtual Branch Networking (VBN) solution and has plans to deploy increasingly advanced applications over its Aruba secure wireless access network. With 35 stores in operation and the chain continuing to grow, Gristede's found the ability to replace expensive appliances and costly WAN links with Aruba's Remote Access Points (RAPs) easier, faster and lower in cost than any available alternative. Aruba AP-105 access points at each store let the retailer run everything from digital signage to inventory control over its in-store mobile network, and ensure PCI compliance for business transactions.
Gristede's has been feeding New Yorkers for over 100 years. Its stores offer fresh meats, produce, dairy products, baked goods, frozen foods, gourmet foods, and nonfood items. In addition to providing great products, Gristede's is intently focused on optimizing its customers' shopping experience. Its customers have come to expect not only the best products at the greatest value in town, but also a high level of personal engagement and a high-quality experience. The company's ability to continue to deliver that increasingly depends on its in-store wireless networks.
"We deployed wireless network initially for inventory control," said Shawn Winters, IT Infrastructure Manager for Gristede's. "Now we have added wirelessly-enabled digital signage at all 35 stores, allowing us to increase our personal engagement with customers, and we plan on selling advertising in the windows and on the aisle end caps. My vision for some of the newer stores is to just go wireless because it significantly lowers the cabling costs and cuts down setup time from weeks to hours. The zero-touch provisioning functions mean a field tech can take an off-the-shelf Aruba RAP-5WN access point and provision it by just knowing the IP address to enter in the simple web setup. It doesn’t get much easier than that."
With the Aruba RAP, all configuration, management, authentication and reporting are done centrally by an Aruba Mobility Controller in the company's data center. Processor-intensive network services such as content security are handled in the cloud, optimizing performance without incurring additional costs. Aruba’s VBN can reduce capital expenditures by as much as 60 percent and operating expenses by as much as 75 percent when compared to existing branch router solutions.
Failover to 3G/4G is another advantage that of Aruba’s VBN offers Gristede’s. "Aruba’s VBN allows us to operate entirely over the USB 3G/4G connection when the primary T-1 link is down," said Winters. "True POTS line connections don’t exist in many of our locations so this was a huge benefit that we didn’t even consider at the initial phase of our Aruba implementation. When the wired side goes down it usually kills all connections to the stores because most of the dial tone service is channel banked. I’ve been able to leverage this to provide centralized wireless management, PCI compliance, WIDS and wired IDS to a degree and centralized wired management. We plan to implement and seamlessly integrate Aruba's Virtual Intranet Access (VIA) agent to secure our mobile endpoints soon. As I add features the ROI increases exponentially."
"Gristede's is a great example of a company driving customer-facing innovation by evolving its wireless network from inventory control to much more powerful use," said Manish Rai, head of retail marketing for Aruba. "The opportunities that retailers have to engage their customers more directly and impactfully using in-store mobile networks have never been greater."
To learn more about the innovative in-store mobile strategies being employed by leading retailers, and to discover additional insights about in-store mobile advancements, register now for the March 9, 2011 Aruba webinar, "The State of In-Store Mobility", here: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/827115426.
Source: Aruba Networks Inc.
