Why Network Transformation Is Now Retail’s First Step to Innovation

Published 10/02/26 under:

When you work with large retailers every day, you start to see the same pattern. The ambition is there’s AI, automation, unified commerce, real‑time decisioning but the foundations underneath simply weren’t built for the pace retailers, and the industry now demands.

And increasingly, the first question we ask isn’t about AI strategy or customer journeys. It’s: “Is your network ready for what you’re trying to do?”

According to Gartner, by 2027 85% of workload placements made before 2022 will no longer be optimal. That statistic lands hard in retail, because so many estates/ stores were built for a world of predictable traffic, batch data, and siloed digital channels. Retail has outgrown that world, but the infrastructure hasn’t kept up.

Retail Has Modernised Just Not in Sync

Most retailers we support have modernised impressively, but unevenly. Ecommerce surged ahead. Data teams built sophisticated platforms. Stores digitised. Supply chains became more transparent. But each of these shifts happened at different times, with different vendors, under different pressures.

Gartner calls this out directly: I&O, cloud and application modernisation often happen in silos, creating friction, cost and operational drag. We see this every week.

• Store networks that behave differently depending on region or legacy vendor
• Cloud adoption that grew organically rather than intentionally
• Workloads sitting in the wrong place for performance or cost
• Data platforms that can’t operate in real time because the pipes aren’t consistent

The result is an estate that works but only because people work incredibly hard to keep it working.

Unified Commerce Needs Unified Infrastructure

Retailers talk about unified commerce with real conviction. But delivering it requires more than aligned teams or redesigned journeys. It demands an architecture that behaves as one system. According to Gartner, modernisation must start with business outcomes and follow a workload‑centric approach, not just a technology‑first one.

In practice, that means:

• Consistent networks
• Intentional cloud adoption
• Real‑time data flows
• Composable, API‑driven platforms
• Governance that supports distributed decision‑making

You can design the most elegant customer experience imaginable. But if the network can’t support the data flows behind it, it will never scale and AI has quietly raised the bar even further.

Gartner’s retail predictions point to AI shopping agents initiating a growing share of online purchases, AI inventory agents becoming essential for competitiveness, smart stores relying on edge compute, and AI governance failures causing more brand damage than cyber breaches. Every one of these capabilities depends on:

• real‑time, high‑quality data
• low‑latency, resilient connectivity
• consistent APIs
• cloud platforms that scale dynamically
• secure, distributed architectures

Legacy networks simply weren’t built for this level of interdependency which is why network transformation has become the first real step toward innovation in retail.

When retailers commit to full network transformation SD‑WAN, SASE, cloud networking, edge compute the shift is immediate. We’ve seen:

• incidents fall across entire estates
• store rollouts accelerate dramatically
• cloud platforms finally perform as intended
• data becomes more usable, more consistent, more real‑time
• security strengthen without slowing the business
• new capabilities land cleanly instead of causing operational disruption

We describe this as building the digital foundation the layer that enables everything else to move with clarity and confidence. Once the network is modernised, innovation stops being a risk and starts being a rhythm.

How can Kerv help?

Retail environments rarely start from a blank slate. They’re shaped by years of growth, acquisitions, tactical fixes and legacy systems that have served the business well but now limit its pace.

Our role at Kerv is to simplify that complexity. We design and deliver secure, scalable cloud and network architectures that reflect the realities of retail: high volumes, distributed locations, variable demand and the need for real‑time insight.

But technology alone isn’t enough. CIOs must ensure cohesion across teams, domains and platform strategies. That’s where we spend just as much time shaping the operating model, governance and roadmap so modernisation embeds properly and continues to deliver value long after go‑live.