Who are hmv?
hmv is a leading specialist retailer of music, film, games and technology products, with over 130 stores around the UK, offering a wide selection of new release and catalogue titles.
The hmv brand is synonymous with the very history and development of British popular music and culture. hmv’s rich heritage as a retail specialist stretches back over 90 years to 1921 when its first store in London’s Oxford Street was opened.
Why Cisilion?
Derek Walklate, Service Delivery Manager
“Cisilion showed a great understanding of our business requirements, they also demonstrated expertise in all areas. That gave us great confidence when working with them going forward.”
Snapshot
HMV were struggling to find a reliable and responsive partner to replace legacy networking infrastructure. HMV were operating on old technology and IT solutions which prevented them from performing to their fullest potential.
After showcasing our skills and expertise at our SD-WAN Innovation Centre event, HMV chose Cisilion, leading to a partnership which resulted in the deployment of Cisco Meraki’s SD-WAN across HMV’s 130+ stores. This transformed the productivity of their staff along with huge cost savings.
Challenges
HMV were using legacy network solutions that were not performing as required. With stores around the country, this resulted in the following challenges:
- Specialist resources required to maintain existing legacy network
- No resilience across 130+ stores
- No Wi-Fi solution and limited bandwidth
How did Cisilion help?
- Improved transparency
- Cost savings
- Increased productivity of their staff
- Provided valuable advice and expertise
- Exceeded business objectives
Solution
The Cisco Meraki cloud networking solution offered by Cisilion combines 100% cloud-managed networking optimised for ease-of-use with secure and scalable infrastructure.
The benefits of the SD-WAN solution include rapid deployment with self-provisioning hardware, control of applications, users and devices, built-in multisite management, automatic monitoring and alerts, quarterly firmware updates and new features.
HMV attended a series of SD-WAN events hosted and workshopped by Cisilion before the retailer decided to go with Cisilion and their recommended Cisco Meraki solution. The solution was deployed in October to be finished ahead of the peak Christmas trading period.
Benefits & Numbers
Through the deployment of SD-WAN across their stores, HMV were able to achieve significant cost and business operation savings of over £200,000 and obtain complete visibility across HMV’s 130+ stores.