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CoverStory

Sell processing continuity how much business they lose if they're down for an hour,
is something to consider when evaluating fail-over solu-
Lyman mentioned that networks have to be available or tions, he stated.
merchants will not be able to process payments, which
could cost them sales. "In some cases, merchants may be Stefan Tapia, national sales manager at OptConnect, char-
shortsighted by only looking at a solution's cost without acterized back-up communications as essential in today's
considering what it would cost if their communications on-demand business environment. Managing connectiv-
are down, even for one hour," he said. "There's a signifi- ity across complex device populations can be challenging
cant cost to that, and this could be a worthwhile topic for for merchants and acquirers alike, he noted. Subscription-
MLSs to discuss. It's another area where, with the right based services provide merchants with necessary hard-
training, they can distribute these types of solutions." ware, access to multiple data networks and visibility into
deployed devices and SIM cards. OptConnect believes
He went on to say that TNS and other service providers that optimizing connectivity enables managed service
offer a variety of network and processing continuity so- providers to help MLSs attract and retain more merchant
lutions that can be tailored for top-tier, small or midsize customers.
merchants. Evaluating these services from a cost benefit
perspective will help merchants identify the right solution "Every experienced MLS has dealt with clients' internet
fit. going out," Tapia said. "The first call comes to the MLS,
because merchants rarely think of their ISP provider when
Steve Garrett, chief product officer at OptConnect, has they can't take payments." He pointed out that merchants
seen rampant cord-cutting, as U.S. consumers and busi- can no longer depend on generic data connections, and
ness owners replace landlines with cellular networks. This MLSs who recommend data back-up plans will establish
has led phone companies to reduce investments in land- credibility and trust. Merchants may not buy in on day-
line infrastructure, new deployments and maintenance. one, but they will remember the agent and conversation
when the power goes out, he added.
"As a result, landline infrastructure is aging, becoming
less reliable and more susceptible to environmental is- Think big, go wide
sues such as storms," he said. "Additionally, landline ser-
vice is being transitioned from analog to digital, utilizing Andy Gottlieb, vice president, SD-WAN solutions at Or-
newer technology in the phone companies' switching cen- acle Communications, proposed using a combination of
ters. Digital phone technology is often incompatible with wired and wireless connections to mitigate risk of having
equipment previously deployed at the point of payment, a single last-mile point of failure that could cause loss of
resulting in unreliable service, even when the underlying connectivity. Software-defined, wide-area network (SD-
infrastructure is operating normally." WAN) solutions are a cost-effective way to optimize net-
work security and redundancy, he noted.
Sell back-up systems
"Oracle's SD-WAN technology was designed from the
"As we've seen with recent power outages in California, start to deliver high reliability and high application qual-
catastrophic events inevitably impact businesses," Lyman ity of experience while leveraging less-reliable Internet
said. "However, diversifying vendors, carriers and tech- connections to augment or replace lower bandwidth,
nology can reduce the chances or likelihood that an entire more expensive private WANs," he said. "With intelligent
network will go down." SD-WAN solutions, merchants no longer need to operate
and maintain separate costly infrastructure for low-band-
Deploying assorted technology from different vendors width, business-critical POS transactions, but can instead
creates diversified solutions, which Lyman indicated is a safely and securely leverage the same data network used
core principle at TNS. The company strives to design ser- for other functions at their sites."
vices that have no single point of failure, which creates
secondary or tertiary pathways, minimizing the chance Emphasizing the need for multiple, diverse connections,
that all endpoints in a merchant's network will go down at Gottlieb said an intelligent SD-WAN offering ensures se-
the same time, he added. curity, availability and consistently predictable application
performance. SD-WANs deliver more than just failover, he
Lyman also noted that these solutions can be scaled up stated, adding that their sub-second response rates keep
or down, depending on merchant requirements. Even a networks running during weather events, internet conges-
small merchant with a few payment terminals can imple- tion or when a given link drops. They can also improve
ment a broadband primary service with wireless backup. responsiveness for low-bandwidth, delay-sensitive appli-
A tabletop broadband terminal that automatically fails cations like payment processing, by replicating traffic on
over to wireless is a cost effective solution, because most two different network paths while suppressing duplica-
wireless data plans are not expensive and merchants only tions, he said.
pay for what they use. It's up to the merchant to measure
cost versus risk, but again, the cost of being down and

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