BJ's shifts to MPLS network

BJ’s Wholesale Club has enlisted the help of Qwest in its quest to sell large quantities of goods at low prices.

Last week, the Natick-based retailer announced that it had signed a multi-year, multimillion-dollar agreement to have Qwest iQ Networking services installed in its 175 clubs. The iQ system, which debuted in 2004 and has been installed by companies such as Krispy Kreme and Waterworks, is a network package that bundles, among other services, VoIP, firewall and intrusion detection. The system is MPLS-based and has bandwidth speeds of up to 40Gbps.

For BJ’s CIO John Polizzi, the decision to have Qwest network BJ’s club locations had a lot to do with keeping up with the technological times.

“The legacy technology was coming to the end of its useful life and was no longer meeting the needs of BJ’s operating environment,” he says. “This technology will improve our ability to interact with our members, as well as train our employees.”

Polizzi says one of the biggest advantages for BJ’s in the deal will be that it will let the company use VoIP to integrate all the store locations to make services more efficient. He also believes that more retail chains will soon be moving over to systems such as iQ.

“The realities of deploying technology to hundreds or thousands of operational sites are high levels of complexity and significant costs,” he says. “Businesses will leverage network capabilities to drive customer relations, operational efficiencies and collaboration within high dispersed organizations.”