COUNTRY FOCUS: NORDICS
Elkjøp is the largest electronics retailer in the Nordics, operating across Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland.
Nordic giant Elkjøp modernis overcoming legacy limits to b
Oslo at night with the Opera House glowing by the waterfront
With over 420 stores and 10,000 employees, the company requires an agile and robust IT infrastructure to support its dynamic retail operations to not only meet, but exceed, consumers’ expectations.
It’ s a lofty goal and one that Elkjøp Infrastructure Manager Reno Dokken was ready to achieve. Dokken leads a team responsible for maintaining Elkjøp’ s platforms, networks and security policies, ensuring a seamless digital environment for both employees and customers. It’ s his team who must ensure Elkjøp can keep up with rapid market changes and periods of high traffic.
“ We need to be ready to scale up or scale down and be very dynamic in what we do,” said Dokken.“ A simple network change used to take six weeks. Now, with Cato, it takes seconds.”
Legacy network and security vendors unable to meet modern agility needs
Six years ago, Elkjøp embarked on the mission to rebuild the entire( point-of-sale) POS system to support more powerful integrations and better keep pace with market changes.
“ We built a modern POS system ourselves, based on cloud infrastructure, Kubernetes, Internet connectivity, multi-factor authentication, and the ability to run on personal devices,” Dokken said.
However, the switch to modern cloud applications required a modern infrastructure. Elkjøp’ s legacy infrastructure relied on a traditional hub-and-spoke Multiprotocol Label Switching( MPLS) network that required significant maintenance and lacked the flexibility necessary for modern cloud-based operations.
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