Pantaloon's retail connectivity operations provided by sify

Background

Pantaloon today is a leading manufacturer-retailer in the country with 13 Pantaloon stores, 9 Hypermarkets, 13 Food Bazaars and 2 Central operations across the country.

Incorporated in the year 1987, the retail major currently operates multiple format stores like Pantaloons - The Family Store, Big Bazaar, The Discount Hypermarket & Food Bazaar, Food & Grocery Super Market. The company recently launched Central -- India's first seamless mall chain, spread across 1.5 lakh square feet in Bangalore & in Hyderabad followed by Pune.

In line with its exponential growth plans, Pantaloon Retail (India) Ltd., one of the country's major players in the retailing segment, entered into a major IT deployment drive by revamping its back-end operations.

Commenting on Pantaloon's connectivity requirement, Mr. Jitendra Sarode, IT Infrastructure Head said, "Pantaloon was looking for an IP based VPN solution to establish network connectivity between its central location at Mumbai (Jogeshwari) and the branch offices and stores located across India. The main application servers were to be located at Mumbai and the primary data interchange was for accessing the Oracle Financial Applications, Messaging, Video Conferencing, VOIP & Intranet.

Pantaloon was looking for a robust, redundant and secure network for connecting its remote locations to the central location for running its data applications".

The set-up before the VPN deployment consisted of Individual PSTN Dial-up connections at stores and branch offices and the Central Warehouse at Tarapore, connected through ISDN Dialup. Daily sales reports were sent to HO, via e-mail and were consolidated at HO. ORACLE Financials and in-house developed package Retail Enterprise Manager /MIS were the applications running on these lines.

Issues with Earlier Connectivity

After discussions with officials, four issues emerged in relation to the earlier connectivity:

Moreover, Pantaloon was in the process of rolling out its Oracle Financial application & was in need of a robust, scalable, cost effective and highly reliable Last Mile connectivity solution.

Pantaloon evaluated many options like Last Mile Leased Line and Wireless before zeroing in on the solution presented by Sify.

Criteria for Selection of Service Provider

Says Mr. Jitendra Sarode, IT Infrastructure Head: "Our criteria for selecting a service provider was based on several criterias, (a) The service provider should have had experience in implementing the technology solution presented to us (b) Expertise in Last Mile solution (c) Robust Infrastructure (d) The right price-value proposition and (e) Service infrastructure.

Sify was chosen because they are one of the leaders in implementing Last Mile wireless solutions, a fail-safe infrastructure with extensive presence in the country"

Sify's Connectivity Solution for Pantaloon

Sify proposed an IP VPN solution on its countrywide backbone for connecting the branch offices of Pantaloon to the central location in Jogeshwari, Mumbai.

Sify recommended Pantaloon to go in for an IP VPN solution as this technology offers the best features and functions of the technologies, viz ATM /Frame Relay. The implementation was performed at the ISP's edge, thereby providing greater control and management while maintaining complete customer transparency, as in the case of ATM / Frame Relay.

Sify connected all branch offices to the central office location in Jogeshwari, Mumbai. All the critical servers of Pantaloon were to be located in Jogeshwari office and all the branch locations / stores were to access this server through tunnels created on a IP based VPN network of Sify.

The central office in Mumbai would connect to the nearest Sify NOC in Mumbai on a 2 Mbps Wireless Link. Sify provisioned 2 Mbps of VPN bandwidth in Mumbai, which was to be used by the branch offices for accessing the servers at Mumbai, with provision for a 512 kbps of ISDN backup to ensure high availability.

Sify has a fully meshed Tier 1 network and thus the data from all the offices of Pantaloon could access the central office through the IP tunnels created on the Sify backbone. Sify provided adequate VPN bandwidth ports at all these locations to access the central servers in Mumbai.

Sify also configured IP tunnels between the branch offices and the central location at Mumbai. All data traffic originating at each of these offices would travel through the IP tunnels to the central server location of Pantaloon.

Sify also provided Pantaloon with a web-based tool for monitoring the bandwidth utilisation on these links. Pantaloon could thus augment the bandwidth at the central location in case the link utilization reached the threshold limit.

The solution from Sify offered multiple benefits to Pantaloon

a) Very quick implementation meant that several of the applications were up and running with minimum disruption b) Productivity and efficiency of the IT team was considerably enhanced by outsourcing the VPN network management to Sify. c) Additional value added services such as VOIP, Video conferencing can be implemented on the current network. Pantaloon is also looking forward to implementing the same soon, which would lead to a greater interactivity and communication within the organisation.

- Charulata, Sify Mumbai