Extreme Networks in Retail, Transportation & Logistics: the power to deliver!

As retail and T&L organizations embrace digital transformation, they are investing heavily in new technologies to drive better business outcomes. However, in order to support the ever increasing volume of users, devices, and applications, companies from this sector are on the constant move to achieve better network coverage, higher capacity, and more bandwidth. Considering large physical environments such as warehouses or distribution centers, it is not an easy task. Even more so, if we’re discussing facilities of strategic importance, such as sea ports.

“You must be able to count on the network’s availability, everything must be redundant, because in today's world there is no room for even the smallest interruptions”, says Reimo Salumets, IT Infrastructure Architect at the Port of Tallinn. “The volume of the transferred information is growing rapidly, especially given the fact that the core network is also used for video streaming. The number of security cameras is increasing, and so does their image resolution All that brings great pressure on the network bandwidth, requiring higher performance from the core network”,

In order to reduce waiting times for ships, improve operational efficiency, enhance security, and further drive the quality of customer service, Ashdod Port, one of the most important sea ports on the Mediterranean Sea, has invested heavily in advanced technologies and new IT systems over the past few years. It also meant the need for a purpose-built network solution that would ensure extremely high performance and availability for seamless operation. When you have to maneuver huge ships and hoist containers that weigh dozens of tons, it is absolutely crucial that you can rely on your network to provide a super-fast response time.

To address those challenges, Ashdod Port implemented a software-defined solution built around Extreme Fabric Connect, the leading SPB technology on the market, combined with the ExtremeCloud IQ – Site Engine controller.

“Extreme Fabric Connect is an ideal solution for this kind of implementation. System speeds are now 20 times faster and this will be reflected in faster execution of tasks, quicker release of trucks from the Port, and ships spending less time in port (…)”, says Sharon Ezra, Director of the Strategic Customers’ Presale Department at Bezeq International, the company responsible for the implementation

“We chose to implement Extreme Fabric Connect enabled switches for the new core network to get the most out of the IEEE 802.1aq (…) The throughput of our new core network is relatively difficult to estimate, the links between devices are ten times faster than with the previous solution, but because full mesh connections have been used, the increase in core throughput is significantly more than ten times (…) For us, it was the best choice on the Estonian market”, adds Reimo Salumets of the Port of Tallinn.

Working in the retail, logistics and transportation industry can teach you the value of reliability, availability and impeccable delivery. And since every organization can move as fast as its technologies, companies from this sector require their networks not only to be reliable and high-performing, but also flexible and scalable, as the needs and environments grow at an unprecedented rate – especially in the time of pandemic which drives massive growth for the logistics industry.

Since retailers and T&L organizations are incurring a multitude of IT costs related to deploying a complex network infrastructure and managing and updating all the various network components, CTOs and IT managers are looking for solutions that can streamline multiple aspects of their network, optimize resource use, cut operating costs, and enable a smooth transition without downtime.

In order to improve processes in the central office and warehouse hub, make it easier for the IT team to control the rapidly growing environment and accommodate plans for future expansion, Dino Polska S.A., one of the fastest-growing chain of proximity markets in Europe, decided to combine the capabilities of Extreme Fabric Connect with the ExtremeCloud IQ – Site Engine controller. The result? A unified solution for managing, monitoring, and deploying wired and wireless networks that allowed to simplify provisioning, change propagations and configurations, making it easier to add several dozens of new network devices and enabling a frictionless modernization of the subsequent warehouses.

“(…) We have the Fabric Attach feature that leverages the flexibility and extensibility of Fabric Connect to quickly and automatically add switches and access points to the network (…) Considering the fact that our environment is changing rapidly, we can comfortably say that the reduced network complexity and the Extreme management panel helped us save money in our IT budget”, says Dariusz Włodarczyk, the Head of IT Infrastructure at Dino Polska S.A. “With our new Extreme solution in place we are able to manage the entire network infrastructure without the need to expand our staff exponentially, thus minimizing the company’s operating costs”.

“Compared to the previous technologies that we used, the new solution makes our lives much, much easier. The Extreme Networks Fabric solution has an extremely high level of automation, which significantly reduces the administrative resources required to manage and expand the network”, adds Reimo Salumets of the Port of Tallinn.

It shouldn’t come out as a surprise that the transport and logistics sector, one of the world’s largest and highest-revenue industries, is increasingly being targeted by hacker attacks like phishing, ransomware etc. Being a critical infrastructure at the national level and processing vast amounts of proprietary data belonging to customers from all around the globe, Ashdod Pot would settle for nothing less than the best solution in terms of network security.

Utilizing the Extreme Fabric Connect solution once again proved highly beneficial, as it allows Ashdod Port and hundreds of other transport and logistics organizations worldwide to leverage a powerful hyper-segmentation capability. This means the ability to set up a large number of private, fully isolated virtual networks with ease, without any visibility and accessibility from an IP perspective, meaning a dramatically lower risk of a network breach.

It is worth mentioning here that the EU cybersecurity rules introduced in 2016 have been recently updated by the NIS2 Directive that came into force in 2023. The directive identifies transport and logistics as one of sectors that are vital for the economy and society and that rely heavily on ICT, therefore requiring a modernized legal framework to keep up with an evolving cybersecurity threat landscape and improve the resilience and incident response capacities of both public and private entities.

To further increase and automate network security, Dino Polska S.A. decided to combine the hyper-segmentation technology with ExtremeControl, a network access control system (NAC). Thanks to the granular visibility and in-depth control, the customer is now able to better control users and devices across both wired and wireless networks.

“(…) The SPB protocol itself, which Extreme Fabric Connect is based upon, takes our information security to a whole new level, Dariusz Włodarczyk from Dino Polska S.A. sums up.

Extreme’s fabric solution removes the complexity and the costs of traditional deployments, employing a powerful fabric infrastructure with a simpler, economic model. The solution meets the unique technology requirements of retail, transport, and logistics environments and enables organizations with robust infrastructure to support the increased connectivity needs of today.