2019 and beyond will be an exciting time thanks to the growing number of cloud solutions for retailers. With an increasing amount of advanced technology hitting the market, and with consumers demanding a responsive and robust user experience, retailers will need cloud-based solutions to ensure they keep up with the rapidly advancing market.
Cloud solutions for retailers offer multiple benefits
Cloud solutions for retailers help solve many challenges when navigating this dynamic environment.
Mitigate unpredictable costs
By eliminating ownership of older, outdated technology and equipment – which often requires expensive maintenance and upgrades – retailers save thousands of dollars both immediately and into the future. CBTS also helps retailers reduce staffing costs associated with hiring IT personnel to manage and maintain infrastructure. With CBTS cloud solutions, our clients only pay monthly usage-based fees rather than having to manage the constantly fluctuating costs of building and maintaining a large data center, hiring additional IT staff, and repairing or replacing technology.
Support information organization and management
Cloud-based technology allows retailers to monitor all of their resources, including inventory tracking and management, orders, and shipping information, through one convenient online portal. These businesses can access their data immediately, rather than contacting IT to determine where the information is stored.
Support security initiatives
Retailers can feel safe and secure knowing their data is being monitored by trained professionals 24x7x365 and housed in a high-availability, cloud-enabled data center. CBTS provides a cloud toolset that includes state-of-the-art Intrusion Detection (IDS) and Intrusion Prevention (IPS) Systems. Our robust anti-malware products guard against online threats to preserve the integrity of your data. Our security experts implement a network segmentation strategy to create a more secure network by limiting attack options—making it more difficult for an assault on your entire network.
Data analytics inform, direct strategic retail initiatives
Built-in analytics enable retailers to examine foot traffic patterns as well as determine which employees are using in-store Wi-Fi to access various applications. Retailers can also set rules restricting certain apps to specific individuals or user groups.
CBTS analytics can be easily integrated into contact center solutions to uncover traits for a more personalized shopping experience, track the effectiveness of client loyalty programs, show traffic trends, and launch targeted and timely push notifications and promotions.
Cloud management allows retailers to focus on business
By allowing CBTS to manage their cloud technology, retailers are freed to do what they do best: operate their business and focus on strategic objectives. Professionally certified engineers monitor the cloud environment every minute of the day, every day of the year. The infrastructure may be located on the retailer’s premises or in a third-party data center.
CBTS provides cloud solutions for retailers that are:
- Public: Allows application and server workload implementation in minutes. This solution is most beneficial for web-based applications that are built for native public cloud use.
- Private: All assets are dedicated to a retailer’s exclusive use. This solution is useful for highly regulated and complex environments.
- Hybrid: Connected management and support of both on- and off-site resources. This solution is ideal for integrated web and large database environments.
Different retailers have different cloud needs, and CBTS provides customized options to manage these technologies with end-to-end design, build, and run services:
- 24x7x365 monitoring and reporting
- Alert notifications and escalations
- Patch management and implementation
- Timely resolution of any incidents
- ITIL best practices
- Industry-leading infrastructure technology
- Decades of cloud, managed service, and data center experience
- Solutions that scale with business growth
Cloud protection ensures critical information is safe
Data breaches or data losses can be devastating and affect consumer loyalty and trust. It is imperative that merchants have data protection, backup, and recovery services to combat:
- Malicious software. CBTS security experts are constantly monitoring your network for potential threats and viruses such as ransomware.
- Infrastructure downtime. CBTS cloud services prevent infrastructure downtime, during which customers may not be able to use technology such as purchasing software, payment options, or point-of-sale terminals.
- Complete data loss. CBTS provides real-time cloud backup to an offsite data center and secondary failover to a third site.
- Outdated security. CBTS ensures security requirements are always compliant and up-to-date.
CBTS data protection services include both Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) and Backup as a Service (BaaS). DRaaS is a multi-tenant cloud-based disaster recovery solution that duplicates a retailer’s IT environment at a secure CBTS facility. BaaS, on the other hand, is a secondary offsite CBTS data backup solution that can restore files and data in minutes.
Cloud-based solutions for retailers support future success
Because many retailers have limited IT resources, a provider like CBTS is ideal to offload the burden of cloud management and protection.