His Master's VAR: reseller in tune with HMV to land monster cloud deal

Cisco reseller will deploy cloud network overhaul at 130 HMV stores

Entertainment retailer HMV has inked a deal with global reseller Cisilion to replace the firm's current network in 130 locations.

Cisilion will deploy Cisco Meraki's software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) across the sites, with the cloud networking product promising an easier-to-use infrastructure.

"By partnering with Cisilion, we will now have a private, fully managed network, accelerating growth and allowing more flexibility to help HMV achieve our goals of modernising our retail sites," said Darren Houghton, head of IT at HMV.

"Not only are we reducing costs by moving from legacy MPLs to internet base connectivity, but the Cisco Meraki SD-WAN solution will also allow us to add monitoring and surveillance on top of the solution, increasing security levels across all our sites."

Alex Hooper, CTO at Cisilion, said the firm is excited about expanding its retail portfolio through the HMV deal.

"We are seeing increased demand for modernising expensive and complex legacy WANs to enable cost-effective transformation and expansion," he said.

The network will be deployed in October 2017 to be finished just in time for the peak Christmas trading period.