Target Architecture and Network Roadmap

Background

Value Retail Group specialise in the development and operation of luxury shopping outlet. The Value Retail Bicester Collection consists of 12 villages in total located across the UK, the USA, Ireland, France, Spain, Germany, Belgium and China. 

At the time of engagement, the Value Retail infrastructure environment was fit for purpose but based on aging technologies. Value Retail aimed to develop a long-term plan to refresh their infrastructure environment with modern technologies that provided a foundation for business drivers.  

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Project Objectives

The objectives of the project was to work alongside the Forfusion, Value Retail’s network partner, to achieve the following. 

• Assess the current network and infrastructure environment. 
• Identify a Target Architecture to help Value Retail deliver against their business drivers.
• Develop a five-year roadmap to achieve the Target Architecture.  
• Evolve the Target Architecture and Network Roadmap on a six-monthly basis. 
• Work alongside Forfusion to ensure that project delivery is aligned with the Target Architecture. 

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Approach

The Starfish approach involved consultation with the Value Retail business, development of a vendor agnostic Target Architecture, creation of a five-year Network Roadmap and then evolution of both documents on a six-monthly basis.    

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Initial Consultation

Starfish ran several workshops with both business and technical stakeholders. The purpose of the workshops was to understand the current environment, along with its challenges and suitability for the future development of Value Retail. In addition, the workshops were also used to identify Value Retail’s desired business drivers, and how these could be achieved through infrastructure transformation.  

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Target Architecture

To develop the Target Architecture, Starfish married together a top-down and a bottom-up approach. The top-down approach took the view of the business, what drivers were required and what outcomes the technical infrastructure needed to deliver. 

In parallel, the bottom-up approach mapped out modular design for all infrastructure components, such as Cloud, Compute, Storage, LAN, Wireless, WAN, WAN Edge, SASE and Operations. For each module, Starfish defined the requirements and interfaces with other modules. 

The Target Architecture was then formed by using the foundational modules to demonstrate how technology outcomes would be achieved and in turn how the business drivers are enabled through infrastructure. 

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Network Roadmap

Once the Target Architecture had been defined, Starfish carried out a gap analysis for all the modules. Each module was rated as follows. 

• Maintain: Maintain the existing solution. 
• Review: Review the existing solution for suitability. 
• Investigate: Investigate a new solution. 
• Execute: Implement a new solution based on selected technology. 

For all modules other than those marked as maintain, new work packages were created to review, investigate or execute on the modules requirements as per the gap analysis. The modules were also prioritized according to business need and dependencies. These were then formed into a high-level five-year Network Roadmap. 

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Design Assurance

Delivery of the Network Roadmap was led by Starfish’s partner Forfusion. They project managed and implemented the work packages according to the Network Roadmap high-level plan. Starfish continue to operate as Design Assurance for all Network Roadmap projects, reviewing project artefacts and designs to ensure that they are in-line with the Target Architecture and represent the best solutions for Value Retail. 

In addition, Starfish continue to evolve the Target Architecture and Network Roadmap on a six-monthly basis to align with the changing needs of the Value Retails business and the innovation of new technologies. 

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Technology

To date as part of the Network Roadmap programme Starfish have overseen the Forfusion delivery of the following solutions. 

• Migration to a new Wireless Vendor
• Migration to a modern SD-WAN solution
• Implementation of a new data centre compute solution
• Implementation of micro-segmentation

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Conclusion

The Target Architecture and Network Roadmap has allowed Value Retail to manage investment cycles, align technology decisions to a long-term vision and take advantage of innovations and help Value Retail achieve their business goals.