Simplified Global Retail Operations

Consolidate networking, security, cloud and voice onto one platform and one bill, and give your team back the time to grow the business.

The landscape

Picture one of your global stores going dark at 2 AM halfway around the world in Kuala Lumpur. Checkouts freeze. The back office goes quiet. Phones light up. The first hour disappears as your team tries to pin down the problem. Is it the circuit, firewall, SD-WAN, cloud app or voice line? Each has its own provider, support number and definition of urgent. Many global retailers juggle 10 to 15 providers. Every handoff is a chance for something to break and for responsibility to get lost.

No one chose this sprawl. It built up, one country contract and one point product at a time. Omnichannel added more systems to connect. AI pushed compute out to the store. Supply chain changes opened new sites. Security kept adding monitoring tools. Every shift brought another provider and another console, and the job of keeping it all running landed on a team that was never sized for it. Retail faces the highest workforce turnover at 26.7%¹ and operates on IT budgets of just 1.5 to 4% of revenue², about half what other industries spend. With a global cybersecurity talent gap of 4.8 million⁵, running this in-house is no longer practical.

Retailers are responding by streamlining their provider lists. The goal isn’t a smaller estate. It’s running the one they have with a team they can actually staff, by handing the day-to-day to fewer partners who can carry it. That’s why 62% are already consolidating security providers, with another 36% planning to follow within three years³. The trend goes beyond security. Retail and CPG managed services grew 20% year-to-date, compared to just 1.3% for the broader IT market⁴. Retail is moving to managed and co-managed models faster than any other sector. The goal is simple: fewer partners, more accountability, and a team focused on business growth instead of chasing infrastructure issues.

This is about protecting thin margins. Retail net margins sit between 1 and 4%, and in grocery, closer to 1.6%⁶. At these levels, a duplicate contract, an unnecessary truck roll or an hour of downtime hits profits directly. There’s no buffer. Simplifying operations is one of the few ways to cut costs without risking customer experience.

Every hour your IT team spends sorting out provider issues is an hour lost to work that actually grows the business.

62%

of organizations are actively consolidating security vendors, with 36% more planning to within three years

Gartner, 2025

20% YTD

growth in retail and CPG managed services, against 1.3% for the broader IT market

ISG, 2025

1-4%

net retail margins, where a duplicate contract or an hour of downtime lands straight on the bottom line

NYU Stern, Deloitte

4.8M

global cybersecurity talent gap, against retail IT budgets of just 1.5 to 4% of revenue

ISC2, Avasant

Ten to fifteen vendors, one outage

When a store goes down, finding the fault means working across the ISP, firewall, SD-WAN, cloud and voice providers in turn. The first hour is finger-pointing, not fixing.

A device in every corner

Four to five separate boxes in each store, router, firewall, SD-WAN appliance, WAN optimizer and monitoring probe, means more failure points, more truck rolls and a wider PCI footprint.

Day-2 work that never stops

Every new trend adds an integration, a console and a monitoring layer. The run-and-maintain load multiplies on a lean team that’s already stretched thin.

Voice that nobody consolidated

Store telephony often sits on legacy PBX hardware, region by region, as its own vendor layer, long after the rest of the estate moved on.

In retail, simplification is a margin strategy. Consolidating networking, security, cloud and voice onto one platform and one bill takes cost and risk out of the estate and hands the IT team back the time spent on vendors.

The natural consolidation window

Most retail technology contracts renew on three-year cycles, and MPLS estates age out on the same clock, so there’s a built-in moment to rethink the vendor list rather than renew it by default. 81% of buyers end up dissatisfied with the provider they chose⁸ and 80% of enterprise technology decisions carry post-purchase regret⁹, which is why a renewal is the right time to consolidate. GTT works closely with retail clients and can plan transitions around the October-to-January retail change freeze, so cutovers never collide with peak trading.

Where GTT comes in

GTT brings networking, security, cloud and voice together under one partner, one platform and one bill.

The idea is simple: your IT team should focus on work that grows the business, not just keeping the lights on. GTT runs the infrastructure, owns the outcome from end to end, and gives your team one number to call when something changes.

This works because GTT doesn’t just layer a managed service on someone else’s network. GTT owns and operates a global Tier 1 backbone, delivering connectivity, security and cloud through it. One partner is accountable for the entire path from store to application. Most retailers already trust GTT to run their networks. Extending that managed model across the rest of the estate, the security stack, cloud and voice means you add capability through one relationship, not another pile of providers to manage.

The benefits show up differently for each team. CIOs get one operating model across regions and formats. CISOs see fewer control points and more consistent policy. Finance and procurement get fewer contracts and predictable costs. Store teams see fewer outages and less to monitor.

One partner, one platform, one bill. That covers 170 countries and every store you run.

The approach

Many retail estates didn’t start with a plan. They just grew. A new country meant a new ISP. A new requirement meant another point product. Every acquisition brought its own stack. Soon, no single team owned the result, and every change touched half a dozen contracts. GTT flips this. We start with a single operating model and one accountable partner for the entire estate.

Fragmented multi-vendor estate	GTT, one accountable partner
10 to 15 vendors, each with its own portal, SLA and support line	One partner, one platform view and one bill across every store in every country
A 2 AM outage starts with an hour of finger-pointing	One contact, with GTT owning diagnosis across network, security, cloud and voice
4 to 5 devices per store, each a failure point and a truck roll	One GTT EnvisionEDGE device for SD-WAN, firewall, routing and WAN optimization
Per-country ISP contracts and region-by-region voice carriers	One global Tier 1 backbone and one global voice platform
Unpredictable hardware refresh CapEx and variable bills	A predictable per-store operating cost finance can budget against

Who runs what

Consolidation doesn’t mean giving up control. GTT runs the day-to-day, but you keep full visibility and control through GTT EnvisionDX. It’s co-managed by design, not a do-it-yourself headache or a black box. That’s the model most multi-country retailers actually want.

What GTT runs	What you keep	What it frees
Day-2 operations: provisioning, monitoring, patching, security governance, incident response and the transition off incumbent vendors	Visibility, control and self-serve through GTT EnvisionDX, plus your direct hyperscaler and strategic relationships	Your IT team's time, redirected from refereeing vendors to the work that grows revenue
One accountable partner owns the run-and-maintain	Co-managed, not outsourced, so you never lose control of the estate	The capacity a lean team needs to take on AI, omnichannel and growth

From provider sprawl to one operating model

This shift isn’t about buying more. It’s about running what you already have under a single model. GTT takes operational responsibility for the network, security stack, cloud and voice platform, while you keep ownership and control through GTT EnvisionDX. Take public cloud: GTT runs day-to-day operations, but you keep your direct relationship with AWS or Azure. One model across the estate turns a pile of contracts into an operation your lean team can actually manage.

The solution

GTT brings networking, security, cloud, voice and managed services together under one partner, one platform and one contract. This isn’t an abstract promise. Consolidation happens in three real places: the store, the network and the platform your team uses every day.

It starts in the store. One GTT EnvisionEDGE device replaces the four or five separate boxes you used to need: router, firewall, SD-WAN appliance, WAN optimizer and monitoring probe. Edge compute runs on the same device. Fewer boxes mean fewer things to break, fewer truck rolls, a smaller PCI footprint and a store that’s easier to support. Across your estate, GTT’s global Tier 1 backbone covers 170 countries with 400+ points of presence and keeps 80% of traffic on net. You can retire per-country ISP contracts and run on one network instead of a patchwork of regional carriers.

Voice is often overlooked in consolidation, but it’s usually the easiest win. SIP Trunking gives you local numbers in 55-plus countries and toll-free numbers in 120-plus, with direct routing into Microsoft Teams, Cisco Webex and Zoom. Cloud Phone Direct lets you retire on-premises PBX hardware at the store. If you run hundreds of stores across multiple countries, you can move store telephony, contact-center voice and unified communications onto one global voice service, managed alongside SD-WAN and security, not as another provider to manage.

Everything comes together in GTT EnvisionDX. Your team sees network, security, cloud and voice status across every store, connects with GTT online or via API, adjusts services on demand and manages billing, access and site configuration in one place. No more juggling separate provider portals. You get a single view and a single bill. Over 90% of GTT’s global customers already run their networking as a managed service through GTT EnvisionDX. Simplification extends that model across your entire estate.

Behind the platform sits the part that makes consolidation safe: GTT runs it as a co-managed service and owns the transition off the incumbents. For a retailer moving from a tangle of providers, GTT manages the migration end to end, contract overlap, parallel running and a zero-downtime cutover planned around the retail change freeze, so the team never has to operate two networks at once. Program and Service Management, delivered to PRINCE2, ITIL and ISO 20000 standards, govern the large multi-region transformations, and a 24/7 NOC and SOC across three continents watch every site so the retailer’s own team doesn’t have to.

Core capabilities of Managed Hybrid Cloud services

For the CFO and procurement team

Replace unpredictable hardware refresh CapEx with a predictable per-store operating cost finance can budget against.
Collapse 10 to 15 contracts and SLAs into one accountable relationship, with far less administrative overhead.
One bill, one number to call and one compliance posture across network, security, cloud and voice, in every country.

The GTT platform advantage

Simplification works because the entire estate runs on one platform GTT owns from end to end, not a patchwork of tools added later. Each layer of the GTT Envision platform removes complexity.

Consolidates the store. One device carries SD-WAN, firewall, routing and WAN optimization, with edge compute on board, replacing the four or five separate boxes a store used to run. Fewer failure points, fewer truck rolls and a smaller PCI footprint, with new capability service-chained on remotely after deployment rather than dispatched in a van.

Consolidates the network. 25 global nodes orchestrate the virtualized network functions across the Tier 1 backbone, so a retailer runs one network instead of a patchwork of regional carrier contracts, and new capability is turned up remotely rather than rolled out site by site.

Consolidates the experience. One platform view across network, security, cloud and voice, with one bill, self-serve management and APIs. It is the difference between logging into a dozen vendor portals to run the estate and running it all from one place.

The proof

The stories below come from GTT’s customers. Each one is a multinational retailer that consolidated onto GTT and can put a figure against the result. The headline figure is the starting point. The operational gains run alongside: fewer truck rolls, faster incident resolution, fewer vendors to govern and a lighter compliance load, each one protecting a thin retail margin.

Greenyard: 30-plus providers down to one

Greenyard was running more than 30 separate network providers across 70 sites in 25 countries, at roughly €1 million a year in avoidable overhead, before consolidating everything onto GTT. One partner, one platform and one bill replaced the sprawl, the €1 million came back to the business and a lean IT team stopped refereeing vendors and started building. It is the clearest proof in retail that consolidation is a real and recurring cost line, not a soft benefit.

HMY: a four-continent estate, simplified and cheaper

HMY moved its operations across four continents onto GTT in a six-month migration with zero downtime, doubling bandwidth while cutting cost 22%. More capacity for less money, delivered as one managed service rather than a set of regional contracts, and an eight-year relationship that has held since. Proof that consolidation and performance aren’t a trade-off; done right, a retailer gets both.

Also proven

Why GTT

Three things set GTT apart in consolidation. Many providers can take one layer off your hands. Few own the network, security, cloud and voice and run all of it as one accountable service. That’s what turns a pile of contracts into a single operating model.

Connect a global Tier 1 backbone and flexible access

GTT owns and operates a top-ranked global Tier 1 IP backbone reaching 170-plus countries, with 400+ points of presence, 80% of customer traffic on-net and 140,000 customer locations already connected. This lets you retire per-country ISP contracts and run on one network instead of a patchwork of regional carriers. You get consistent performance whether a store opened last year or last week. One backbone for your entire estate is where consolidation begins.

Secure with one platform across network, security, cloud and voice

Everything runs on the GTT Envision platform, with one view and one bill in GTT EnvisionDX and a 24/7 NOC and SOC behind it. Because GTT owns the network, security and cloud underneath, GTT Envision works as one control plane, not an overlay on someone else’s network. You get one security posture and one set of policies across every store and every layer, not a different model for each provider you inherited. GTT Envision is a platform, not a portal.

Simplify end-to-end delivery ownership

GTT runs the estate co-managed. GTT owns provisioning, monitoring, patching, security governance, incident response and the transition off incumbent providers. You keep full control and visibility through GTT EnvisionDX. Professional Services handle large migrations to PRINCE2, ITIL and ISO 20000 standards. Vendor transitions are managed around the retail change freeze so nothing moves during peak. The commercial model replaces unpredictable refresh CapEx with one predictable operating cost. For your lean retail IT team, that’s the difference between refereeing a dozen providers and focusing on work that grows the business. One accountable team, one bill, one number to call.

This is what sets GTT apart from the usual alternatives. A hyperscaler runs only its own cloud and stops at the edge of its network. A carrier sells connectivity but not the security, cloud and voice on top. A systems integrator coordinates other people’s services without owning any of the path. GTT owns the backbone and runs network, security, cloud and voice through it under a single SLA. That’s why you get one accountable team for your entire estate, not a different number to call for every layer.

Retail sub-verticals served

Where provider sprawl is worst depends on your corner of retail. The case for one partner stays the same.

Sub-vertical	Where consolidation shows up
Grocery & Food Retail	Thousands of thin-margin stores where a duplicate contract or an hour of downtime hits a 1.6% net margin directly; one platform and one bill across the estate is a margin lever, not a nicety.
Fashion & Apparel	Seasonal fleets and pop-ups that need fast provisioning and one partner across markets, rather than a fresh carrier and voice contract every time a store opens.
General Merchandise & Big Box	Large estates with the longest vendor lists to collapse, and the most to gain from one bill and one view across every format and country.
Luxury & Specialty	High external-vendor dependency, with 68% of technology change spend going to outside providers, and a need for white-glove consistency across boutiques in dozens of countries, run by one accountable partner.
Health, Beauty & Pharmacy	Compliance-sensitive estates where consolidating network, security, cloud and voice cuts the audit overhead and the vendor count together.
Convenience & Fuel	Thousands of lean-IT, distributed sites, the most natural managed-services fit in retail, where fewer devices per site means fewer truck rolls and lower cost to run.
Consumer Electronics	High-traffic e-commerce and global ERP run alongside store voice on one platform, proven at Distrelec, with vendor transitions managed around launch and promotional peaks.
Wholesale & Distribution	Warehouses, distribution centers and trading-partner connectivity brought under one operating model and one accountable team, with EDI (electronic data interchange, the structured messaging that moves orders between partners) and order management run on the same platform.

Next steps

Simplification starts with seeing the sprawl clearly, and GTT runs the whole arc from there: assess, design, migrate, operate and optimize. Three steps get it moving.

Assess. GTT maps the current estate, the vendors, contracts, devices, voice platforms and Day-2 load, and identifies where the sprawl is costing money, time and resolution speed.
2. Consolidate GTT designs the target operating model and collapses networking, security, cloud and voice onto one platform and one bill, then runs the transition off the incumbents, contract overlap, parallel running and a zero-downtime cutover planned around the retail change freeze, so the team never runs two networks at once. From there GTT operates and optimizes the estate, so the savings keep compounding rather than stopping at cutover.
Talk to GTT. One conversation covers the full four-pillar suite, resilient connectivity, security, right-cloud and simplified operations, with a complimentary vendor-consolidation and TCO assessment to put concrete numbers against the move.

Connect. Secure. Simplify. One partner, one platform and one bill for every store in every country, at a cost you can predict.

¹ Mercer, 2025 Workforce Turnover Survey
² Avasant, IT Spending and Staffing Benchmarks 2024/2025: Retail
³ Gartner, 2025 security vendor consolidation survey.
⁴ ISG Index, Technology Industry Update: Services & Software, Q3 2025.
⁵ NYU Stern and Deloitte, 2026 Retail Outlook
⁶ Grand View Research, Food & Grocery Retail Market (2024-2030)
⁷ Forrester, The State of Business Buying 2024.
⁸ Gartner, “Gartner Survey Finds That Majority of Technology Purchases Come with High Degree of Regret,” 2022.

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GTT Accelerates Customer and Partner Automation with New GTT Envision APIs

Voice Is Still the Least-Transformed Part of Your Network

Simplified Global Retail Operations