Customer Success Story
Badcock Makes Affordable Home Furnishings Within Reach Through Automated Security
Badcock is known for stylish home furniture, accessible credit, and friendly service. One of the largest privately owned retailers in the U.S., Badcock relies on Juniper to make sure that all 378 stores have ultra-reliable, secure connectivity.
378
stores are securely connected across the Southeastern U.S.
Automated
network and security configurations to simplify operations
Scalable
network foundation to support rapid expansion
Badcock opened 30 stores over the last two years. Rapid expansion meant its network needed to support more stores, more applications, and more transactions. “Our business growth drove the need for a network refresh,” says Andrew Pou, a fifth-generation family member and manager of network services at Badcock.
Badcock’s IT team supports the technology needs of the company at all 378 stores, three distribution centers, and back-office operations across eight states. Fast, ultrareliable, and secure connectivity is critical to support store owners, retail customers, and corporate employees. In addition to network outages, which could disrupt sales, cybersecurity threats can lead to data theft and compromised systems at the stores. “We need an extremely reliable connection to support store sales,” Pou says.
Badcock relies on a broad variety of on-premises and cloudbased applications and services for retail operations. The network supports all aspects of business operations, from customer financing to dealer management to administration. It also relies on a cloud-based collaboration solution for phones, videoconferencing, and team messaging.
Badcock chose Juniper’s SRX Series Services Gateways for consolidated security, switching, and WAN connectivity at its stores. Network outages have vanished now that stores benefit from always-on, secure connectivity. Customer transactions are well protected in a Layer 3 VPN from the retail stores to the central core network, so Badcock can efficiently meet PCI DSS requirements and uphold customer trust. “Since we moved to the SRX Series platform, connectivity from the stores to the data center has been rock-solid,” Pou says. “With Juniper, we can easily plan, deploy, and manage security at our stores in a simple, automated way.”
With SRX Series firewalls, each store has redundant, secure links back to Badcock’s data center. If the primary Internet connection fails, store traffic is automatically routed across the 4G cellular network. Applications and store operations continue without disruption. Badcock uses both the Juniper Networks SRX345 and SRX550 Service Gateways. Retail locations also use the Juniper Networks EX2300 Ethernet Switch for compact, high-density switching.
Back in the data center, the Juniper Networks EX9200 Ethernet Switch serves as the network core, providing a programmable, flexible, and scalable foundation for Badcock’s retail expansion. The Juniper Networks QFX5100 Switch, optimized for high performance and density, is used for top-of-rack switching, supporting servers and storage. “The Juniper network is highly reliable,” says Nathan Sellers, senior network engineer at Badcock.
With a small IT team, automation is key to delivering IT services at scale. A Juniper network simplifies automation, providing a foundation of open frameworks, APIs, and toolkits. “Juniper is very open and built around automation,” says Kevin McNeil, IT architect at Badcock. “Juniper works great with anything we want to automate”.
Although the Badcock IT team was new to the Juniper Networks Junos operating system, they quickly acclimated to a new way of network operations. “Junos OS is really intuitive,” Pou says. “The CLI is very easy to use.” With Juniper, the IT team can have confidence that its Juniper network will scale to support customer transactions and business applications as the 116-year-old company delivers great in-store and e-commerce experiences to customers who want to freshen up their homes.
The Products
SRX300
The SRX300 next-generation firewall connects and secures distributed enterprise locations and consolidates security, SD-WAN, routing, and switching in a small desktop device.
SRX550
The SRX550 next-generation firewall is ideal for securing midsized and large branch locations.
EX9200
The EX9200 line of Ethernet switches provides a programmable, flexible, and scalable foundation for delivering mission-critical applications.
Published January 2020