Dec 52012 |
US apparel conglomerate harnesses the latest retail sector IT innovation, powered by CitrixInnovative use of virtualization solution revolutionises Point-of-Sale terminal network, delivering greater control, visibility and costs savings |
Hong Kong – Citrix has been chosen by Warnaco Asia Ltd, licensed operator of Calvin Klein Jeans and Calvin Klein Underwear, to provide the IT backbone for its network of Point-of-Sale (POS) terminals across 650 stores in six Asia-Pacific markets. By adopting a Citrix virtualization and networking solution, Warnaco will benefit from increased control and visibility, while at the same time realizing considerable cost savings. Warnaco's chain of retail stores use PC based POS terminals in Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia and China. Previously, the process of upgrading the POS terminals across the network so they were running the most up to date applications was time-consuming, labour-intensive and costly, requiring a high number of IT staff in each market. In order to ensure business continuity, stores had a window of less than 8 hours outside their normal trading hours to complete their upgrades. As Warnaco expanded in the region, this imposed an increasing IT management burden on the company, prompting it to start looking for more sustainable ways to achieve its objectives. By virtualizing our applications and servers, we're able to update the POS terminal network and add new applications whenever we need to. Our store in Beijing is a perfect example. Although it is one of our larger stores, the only mission-critical IT component we have on-site is a regular Business Broadband that links to our Asia Pacific headquarters and data centre in Hong Kong via Citrix web interface – a cost of around US$35 per month for the ADSL connection. Not only is this far more cost-effective than before, but it also gives us total control of the upgrade process – in other words, we're spending less in order to achieve more.
Another key benefit of virtualizing its POS setup is that the vast majority of the company's IT team can now be based in one physical location, Warnaco's Asia Pacific headquarters in Hong Kong. Other than this, the company now requires only one member of IT staff for each remote location. At the same time, the virtualized solution is highly scalable, a key criterion for Warnaco, which plans to increase the number of POS nodes from the current 650 to over 1,000 by the end of 2013. POS is not the only IT system to benefit from the virtualized architecture, since remote offices in the region run Microsoft Office Suite and Microsoft Exchange from the virtualized platform located in Hong Kong data centre too. The virtualized solution (consisting of Citrix XenServer®, Citrix XenApp® and Citrix NetScaler®) enables travelling users to securely log in to the corporate network anytime from anywhere, using any device. Lamp says this is particularly useful for managers, who can check daily sales and inventory figures while on-the-go, and respond rapidly to any issues that require their input – particularly ad-hoc or store-specific marketing and promotion activities. The concept of virtualizing back office applications is obviously not new, but we are not aware of many retail companies that have taken the bold step of virtualizating their POS terminals. This marks a real innovation, and underlines the many ways that virtualized solutions can help companies, regardless of size, industrial sector, or the geographies in which they operate
About Warnaco Group Inc.Warnaco Group, Inc., headquartered in New York, is a leading global apparel company engaged in the business of designing, sourcing, marketing and selling men's, women's and children's sportswear and accessories, intimate apparel, and swimwear under such owned and licensed brands as Calvin Klein®, Speedo®, Chaps®, and Warner's® and Olga®. For more information, please visit Warnaco.com. About CitrixCitrix (NASDAQ:CTXS) transforms how businesses and IT work and people collaborate in the cloud era. With market-leading cloud, collaboration, networking and virtualization technologies, Citrix powers mobile workstyles and cloud services, making complex enterprise IT simpler and more accessible for 260,000 organizations. Citrix products touch 75 percent of Internet users each day and it partners with more than 10,000 companies in 100 countries. Annual revenue in 2011 was $2.21 billion. Learn more at www.citrix.com. # # # Citrix®, NetScaler®, XenServer® and XenApp® are registered trademarks of Citrix Systems, Inc. and/or one or more of its subsidiaries, and may be registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. All other trademarks and registered trademarks are property of their respective owners.Issued on behalf of Citrix Adam Barty / Ivy Chow (EBA): (852) 2537 8022 (email: adam.barty@ebacomms.com / ivy.chow@ebacomms.com ) Note to editors: this release can also be found on the EBA Website at www.ebacomms.com For enquiries about receiving releases by email, please call Jennifer Tang on (+852) 2537 8022 or send a message to jennifer.tang@ebacomms.com |
