Technology

Southeastern grocer taps HPE's Aruba to modernize operations

Photo provided.

March 16, 2021

Ingles Market, a grocery store chain with nearly 200 stores in the U.S. southeast, is undertaking a major network upgrade with partner Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company.

The grocer is advancing its network with in-store IoT support to better meet customer needs, according to a press release. One operational enhancement is a curbside pick-up service for some locations, as well contactless ordering.

Ingles began replacing its Cisco infrastructure two years ago, swapping out Cisco access points with Aruba's and then began upgrading the full Aruba wireless infrastructure.

Aruba's latest generation of Wi-Fi 6 APs interoperate with the older models Ingles had deployed, making for a simple and more cost-effective strategy than it would have been with other vendors that often require a "rip and replace" to upgrade, according to the release.

"We initially built our network to support limited wireless devices and didn't anticipate some of the changes that our business would encounter," Marty Riedling, director of systems engineering for Ingles Markets, said in the release. "With an increase in wireless IoT devices being used throughout our stores for inventory ordering and management, meat, deli and produce scales, and digital signage, it became clear that we had to build a more forward-looking foundation."

Ingles began a network upgrade, installing additional Aruba Wi-Fi 5 and Wi-Fi 6 APs, access switches, and ClearPass Policy Manager for secure authentication of devices onto the wireless network. To date, Ingles has updated 10 of its 200 stores, keeping inventory systems online, enabling quick price updates for the stores' meat, deli and produce scales, and ensuring that any additional IoT devices can be accommodated on the network without any sacrifice in performance.

"Modernizing our network is crucial to addressing the in-store deluge of devices, and applications necessary for our day-to-day operations," Riedling said in the release.

The network overhaul has also allowed Ingles to address curbside pick-up and facilitate its "click and collect" fulfillment process.