Recent advances in wide area network (WAN) technology are enabling retailers to deploy emerging applications that will provide a new source of competitive advantage, according to a consortium of retailers that met recently to review networking technology standards and carrier provisioned WAN services. Using new multiservice WAN solutions, retailers are able to converge voice, video and data traffic on a single network infrastructure, resulting in expanded data bandwidth capable of supporting new applications as well as dramatically improving telecommunications cost efficiency. "Major retailers collectively spend billions of dollars each year on telecommunications, making this their number one information technology expense after salaries," says 3Com SA`s regional director, Buddie Ceronie. "As such, retailers are looking for new, innovative solutions to support the growing network traffic brought on by emerging Java, browser, multimedia, and video-based store applications." The Retail Multiservice WAN Consortium recently held its first meeting at The Home Depot`s corporate headquarters in Atlanta to define evolving WAN requirements and to discuss new solutions and standards most applicable to the highly decentralised retail environment. During the two day session, the Consortium, which includes The Home Depot, Marriott International, Hannaford Bros., and CompUSA, together with 3Com Corporation, began work on defining a set of specifications for the provisioning and implementation of converged WANs for large-scae retail enterprise infrastructures. The draft specifications describe the standards, services, and equipment requirements for carriers and WAN switch vendors to adhere to, both in the carriers network and in-store. These include standards for voice compression, equipment interoperability, and policy management. Some leading US retail chains, including Wegmans Food Markets and Shaw`s Supermarkets, are already realising the cost benefits of network convergence by running voice, video and data applications. This time division-based convergence represents a cost-effective solution for those retailers with growing data bandwidth requirements, yet have limited on-net (internal) long distance voice traffic, explains Ceronie. "Convergence of voice and data holds the promise of cost-effectively scaling bandwidth to support an ever growing amount of traffic resulting from the deployment of new applications including those that involve video," says Dave Ellis, The Home Depot`s director of I.T. "We see the need to explore next-generation WAN solutions that go beyond the limitations inherent in frame-based convergence." Looking ahead, retailers will benefit from new carrier multiservice offerings that provide convergence to the stores over frame relay or ATM based networks. Another alternative, particularly well suited for more intensive voice, data, and video requirements is ATM based convergence. Ceronie points out that many large retailers are now deploying asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) in the local area network (LAN), both at the corporate office and in-store. ATM is the same technology that is being used by many telecommunications service providers in their internal wide area networks, including MCI. "By using ATM to converge separate voice and data networks into a single multiservice network, retailers with more intensive on-net voice and data requirements are beginning to cost-effectively scale their data bandwidth to the stores and support a new breed of multi-content applications," he adds. Regardless of the technology approach, the aim of the Retail MultiService WAN Consortium is to spur carriers to deliver convergence based solutions in ways that cost-effectively map with the highly decentralised nature of the retail industry.
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