Case Study: Large Retail Company achieves cloud security, high-performance SaaS access and a cut from 2,500 to 5 VPNs with VMware SD-WAN

Retail company gains cloud security and high-performance SaaS access with SD-WAN

A large retail company with more than 500 Internet-connected branch sites was struggling to manage and secure direct branch access to cloud services (UCaaS, Office 365 and AWS). Bypassing data-center backhaul improved user experience but removed the data center’s performance “bookend,” created visibility gaps, and forced complex per-site VPNs for cloud security and access—ultimately resulting in 2,500 VPN tunnels to manage and cumbersome integration with Zscaler.

The company deployed a cloud‑delivered, hosted-management and gateway SD‑WAN (VMware SD‑WAN by VeloCloud) that steered branch traffic directly to cloud gateways, provided centralized policy and performance bookends, and automated VPNs. This simplified deployment and one‑click management, enabled Zscaler integration in minutes, optimized Office 365 and AWS access, reduced the VPN footprint from 2,500 tunnels to 5, and lowered security rollout cost while making it easy to add future cloud services.