Today’s customers are more demanding than ever. Conditioned by outstanding user experiences from online retailers, such as Amazon, customers now expect a superior experience with instant access to information and rapid delivery of products and services when they shop at their favorite stores. All types of businesses— from finance to retail, from restaurant to hospitality— are responding to these higher customer expectations by digitizing operations and embracing the use of mobile devices at their stores and branches. Millions are engaged in an effort to “move to the cloud” to support the resulting explosion of applications such as mobile POS, assisted selling, and back office services, all of which are ultimately focused on boosting competitive positioning and profitability.

Underpinning the performance of these applications is the network itself—and it takes a powerful network to successfully move to the cloud. In essence, customer engagement starts with the network. With cloud-based applications requiring higher bandwidth, stronger security, and better reliability, how can businesses accomplish this move without overwhelming the network or the IT department? Getting to the Cloud— Securely and Efficiently Enter HughesON™, a comprehensive suite of managed network and digital media solutions that enhance existing infrastructure at all branches. Now companies can quickly respond to the changing needs of their business—and get to the cloud—without overwhelming the network or creating additional headaches for IT.

With HughesON, businesses can quickly and easily deploy new branch applications that require high-speed access to the cloud directly from their branch locations—a process known as “split-tunneling” to the Internet. Customer privacy is safeguarded by strong security, which locks down the network through state-of-the-art technology from Fortinet integrated into the Hughes HR4700 Branch Gateway.

The Rise of the Parallel Network

The bandwidth-hungry demands of many new cloud-based applications often exceed what a traditional primary network (typically MPLS) can costeffectively provide. HughesON has the flexibility to readily expand to support them, such as a new guest Wi-Fi initiative, through a parallel broadband network to the primary.

HughesON not only supplements, but can also back-up an existing network to achieve high availability and mitigate downtime. Key to offering unmatched enterprise-grade performance over affordable broadband is Hughes optimization technology—ActiveQoS™ and ActiveCompression™—which is integrated into the HR4700 Branch Gateway and delivers speeds up to 20 times faster than traditional broadband networks.

In addition, critical applications can be prioritized end-to-end over both the broadband Wide-Area-Network (WAN) and the in-store/branch Wireless LAN (WLAN). As a result, customers and employees can enjoy easy and secure access to the Internet with no dead zones or dropped connections.

Fast, Secure Networking is Key

A recent survey of U.S. retailers by Boston Retail Partners (BRP)1 indicates that faster, more secure networking is a key technology to enable real-time retailing and other trends in retail. “The move to real-time retail has tremendous payback,” said Ken Morris, principal of BRP. “The future is this sort of ‘Amazon experience’ at the store level and with that, comes the need for increased bandwidth.”

Unleashing the Power of Video

In today’s video-driven world, what would a customer engagement network be without the ability to easily deliver targeted video to hundreds or thousands of locations? HughesON Digital Media solutions unleash the power of video to engage customers and employees at all branches, when and where it matters most, as well as deliver training, live or on-demand, to branch locations—all managed by a trusted partner.

Customer Engagement Starts with the Network

Adapting quickly to evolving customer and operational needs—without overwhelming the network or the IT department— means having the right network to start with. And the simple answer is: It’s all about agility. Empowering a company’s line of business, marketing, operations, and IT staffs collectively to quickly respond to the needs of the customers is all about the network that underpins the initiatives. Now, that’s agility at work.