How Retailers Are Rethinking Connectivity to Drive Competitive Advantage

As we begin a new year, retail leaders can be forgiven for feeling a little more cautious than usual. Tighter consumer spending and ongoing geopolitical uncertainty have fueled concerns around inflation, costs and supply chain resilience.

Amid these headwinds, the retailers that will come out ahead will be those that double down on what matters most: delivering connected, frictionless experiences across every channel. That starts with the foundation many overlook: their network infrastructure.

Why Connectivity Matters

The promise of unified commerce is within reach for many retailers. By consolidating front- and back-end operations on a single, integrated platform, retailers gain the visibility and control they’ve been striving for. It should mean more efficient operations, greater business agility, and a 360-degree view of every customer to drive seamless, personalized experiences across channels. According to one study, nearly two-fifths of U.S. retailers are maturing their unified commerce capabilities this year in an effort to lower fulfillment costs, reduce cart abandonment rates, and boost sales.

They’re also looking to artificial intelligence to fuel growth and improve business efficiency, especially generative AI-powered shopping assistants. Forrester claims that a fifth of U.S. and EMEA retailers will roll out customer-facing chatbots this year.

However, all these plans depend on having the right kind of connectivity — fast, flexible and reliable links between retail locations, e-commerce infrastructure, and supply chain integrations. Many retailers are still using older network systems that weren’t built for today’s always-on, cloud-driven world. They’re costly to configure and maintain, slow to scale, and complex to operate, often leading to slow systems, frustrated customers, and lost business. And with security often added as an afterthought, these networks can leave gaps that increase compliance risks.

Why Network as a Service

This is why many retailers are turning to a network-as-a-service (NaaS) model, a cloud-based approach that delivers the same flexibility and on-demand scalability as SaaS. It enables companies to move away from rigid, hardware-bound networks and manage connectivity through software instead. Retailers can create secure, high-performance connections between stores, data centers, and cloud platforms quickly.

In this way, retailers gain predictable, flexible connectivity while their network supports every location and service. Bandwidth can be scaled in near real time to meet changing business demands. Privacy and performance are built in, and day-to-day management is simplified through automation and visibility.

This lets IT teams focus on delivering seamless customer experiences instead of managing complex infrastructure. Inflexible networks can be overwhelmed by spikes in demand, and without instant scaling, businesses lose sales. Imagine on Black Friday if shoppers can’t close out their shopping carts simply because the demand on the network has exceeded the provisioned capacity.

Some of the largest U.S. retailers are re-architecting their networks to keep pace with omnichannel demand, connecting thousands of stores, fulfillment centers, and cloud platforms with private, high-speed links. The goal is to deliver faster, more reliable experiences for customers while reducing the cost and complexity of legacy infrastructure.

One of Australia’s largest online retailers is taking a similar approach, using NaaS to simplify and secure its warehouse operations and virtual datacenter.

Building Momentum

The Megaport Cloud Network Report 2025 shows retail is a fast-emerging sector for this type of technology, with industry players increasingly drawn to its flexibility and cost advantages. The report found retailers now run, on average, more than a dozen live network services — growth that’s accelerating as the industry moves toward smarter connectivity.

For decades, MPLS, a traditional enterprise networking system, was the only option. Now retailers have a choice: stick with the old way of doing things or treat networking as a platform for competitive advantage. Outsourcing this most critical IT function means more time to focus on what matters: growing the business in the new year.

Michael Reid is the CEO and board director at Megaport, an IT service management company.