CloudGenix and Aaron’s Blaze Trail for Modern Retail Infrastructure
February 11 2020 - 9:00AM
CloudGenix, the global leader in enterprise SD-WAN, today announced
its partnership with Aaron's, Inc. (NYSE: AAN), a leading
omnichannel provider of lease-purchase solutions, and its
divisions Aaron's and Progressive Leasing, as the
retail company continues its digital transformation. CloudGenix
assists Aaron’s with cloud services and branch office connectivity.
Digital transformation supports 1,600 locations in the
United States and CanadaWith $3.9BN in LTM revenues and
nearly two million customers, Aaron’s serves a large market through
multiple channels and products. The Atlanta-area based specialty
retailer has been in business since 1955 and supports roughly
10,000 employees.
The company’s technology team includes 250 people focused on
support, infrastructure, and application development along with
product management and user experience. The technology team is
based in Kennesaw, GA with field technology employees assisting
with store updates.
Blog post: Aaron’s CIO supports a product
approach to IT service delivery with CloudGenix Autonomous SD-WAN
and CloudBlades
Deploying point-of-sale systems to 1,600 locations in 27
minutesAaron’s has adopted the CloudGenix CloudBlades®
platform to deliver IT solutions to all the company’s 1,600 stores.
The first step was to create a foundation with SD-WAN to centralize
IT. Then the technology team adopted more cloud services for
general productivity applications. The company migrated from
on-premises Microsoft Exchange to Office 365 allowing stores to be
online and connected to the network. As a result, the technology
team is more nimble in providing a better user experience for
employees and customers.
“With CloudGenix, not only are our applications and data moving
to the cloud, but also our remote office infrastructure. We now
have an app-centric view of the world and not a protocol sense of
the world. We are becoming less and less beholden to hardware
refresh cycles and burdensome integration,” said Aaron’s, Inc.
Chief Information Officer John Trainor.
Today, the technology team can deploy point-of-sale systems to
all 1,600 locations in 27 minutes, and with the CloudGenix
analytics tools, the company’s technology team has greater
visibility into daily operations.
“What takes other retailers many months, we do continuously.
And, because of our centralized model conversion, we aggregate data
from stores in real time. With analytics at our fingertips, we can
better serve our stores. We truly have a modern development
environment,” added Trainor.
In addition to providing better network performance, CloudGenix
assisted the company with a smooth migration to VoIP. CloudGenix
balanced the network and cloud infrastructure through bimodal IT,
which eliminated a “boat anchor issue.” CloudGenix also helped the
company achieve network parity with DevOps, support, monitoring and
analytics through guidance on multi-cloud services and layer
abstraction.
On January 24, 2020 in a press release, the TMC editorial team
announced that Aaron’s won the 2020 SD-WAN Implementation Award.
According to the editors, “The honor is reserved for the customers
and vendors willing to push the envelope of performance,
reliability and innovation.”
Trainor and his team plan to continue to partner with
CloudGenix, implementing more of the CloudGenix CloudBlades®
platform. CloudBlades securely delivers best-of-breed branch
infrastructure from the cloud. With CloudBlades, network (SD-WAN),
security, voice, multi-cloud access, and operational tools can be
delivered without additional hardware or software. CloudBlades also
supports Aaron’s desire for an API driven network
infrastructure.
Trainor and the team point to the challenge of getting network
performance right and he credits the CloudGenix partnership with
empowering the infrastructure team: “CloudGenix helps put them in a
lean-forward position vs. a lean-backward position. The level of
engagement of CloudGenix is unmatched. The team, including the CEO,
is easy to work with and responsive,” said Trainor.
Resources
- Aaron’s CIO video
- Aaron’s case study
Connect with CloudGenixTwitter LinkedIn YouTube
CloudGenix Blog
About CloudGenixCloudGenix makes the
Cloud-delivered Branch possible by providing an Autonomous
SD-WANTM and the Cloud-BladesTM platform. Enterprises
gain cloud-scale economics for the branch with the freedom to use
any WAN, any cloud, and any best-of-breed infrastructure service.
Founded in 2013 by a team that has delivered industry-leading
products in networking, SDN, cloud, security and web-scale
applications, CloudGenix serves world-class financial services,
legal, retail and technology organizations.
Press inquiries:Jin Woo 280blue, Inc. jin@280blue.com (510)
691-8862
Aarons (NYSE:AAN)
Historical Stock Chart
From Mar 2024 to Apr 2024
Aarons (NYSE:AAN)
Historical Stock Chart
From Apr 2023 to Apr 2024