Bed Bath & Beyond Mexico Achieves Technological Independence with BloxOne Platform

OVERVIEW

Since its arrival in Mexico in 2008, Bed Bath & Beyond (BB&B) has been a company committed to serving the local market and the needs of its customers. As an expert in home products and the go-to retailer for many major events in customers’ lives, the company has sought to establish an emotional connection with its public. BB&B strives to give its customers confidence when making important home purchases.

Today, with one ecommerce store and 12 physical stores across the country and a workforce of approximately 500 employees, the company is positioned as a favorite among consumers, satisfying a specialized home goods niche with innovative, high-quality products.

THE CHALLENGE

Autonomy: A Business Imperative
Since expanding, BB&B Mexico has been managed as a branch of the parent company located in the US. In the area of IT, this resulted in little autonomy as processes, incidents, and IT needs were centralized at the head office and requests and changes were fulfilled by US employees. “Problems arose when the US team implemented changes that affected all of us in all offices. For example, changes in firewall policies and content filtering without prior notice,” says Luis Bautista, Head of Infrastructure at Bed Bath & Beyond Mexico.

The team in Mexico also experienced challenges with infrastructure management, including a lack of visibility, slow response times, and insufficient data in the documentation. It took time for changes to be reflected as this level of management and control was only available to the parent company.

“At the time, the BB&B team in the US was responsible for implementing any request or change we needed. It could take up to 15 minutes for a change to be reflected. This may be the average response time for typical requests to a parent company’s IT team, but in an industry where every minute counts, we needed more immediate response times to allow us to better serve our customers,” says Bautista.

THE SOLUTION

A Country-Wide Adoption of an Integrated Networking and Security Solution
Since 2019, the BB&B team in the US began an infrastructure migration from BlueCat to Infoblox. Thanks to their experience with the tool, they advised the Mexico team to look for a partner with the necessary experience to migrate from an on-premise solution to a cloud solution with high availability improvements.

In early 2023, the IT team in Mexico began exploring different DNS tools for migrating IT management over to the local team. To do this, they contacted partner Braxem Networks, with whom they had worked previously, to see what solutions were recommended.

It was then that BB&B Mexico discovered the benefits of the BloxOne solution, including BloxOne DDI and BloxOne Threat Defense, both based on the underlying BloxOne Platform. BB&B Mexico recognized this combination as an innovative, cloud-native, core networking and security services architecture that could adapt to its business needs. With BloxOne, the home retailer could migrate business-critical network and security functions to a cloud platform, simplifying the automation and management of vital DNS, DHCP, IPAM, and security functions, thereby gaining greater visibility of the network and possible threats.

After analyzing the advantages, budgetary requirements, and delivery times, BB&B Mexico decided to purchase both BloxOne DDI and BloxOne Threat Defense. Braxem Networks’ support was fundamental in the successful deployment of the solution and the migration of information from the parent organization hosted on BlueCat Networks over to the BloxOne Platform. These activities also served as a set of invaluable training exercises for the BB&B Mexico team.

The implementation began with the head office in Mexico City and was then rolled out to the broader BB&B Mexico organization. “One of the benefits of the implementation was that we didn’t need to wait for the hardware to move forward. We virtualized using BloxOne Host Virtual Licenses,” says Bautista.

In just three weeks, the BB&B Mexico team migrated all networking, communications, applications, and security workloads to BloxOne. “The whole migration was completed with zero service interruptions to customers. We continued to operate both in shops and offices in a seamless way,” says Martin Moriyama, IT Director, Bed Bath & Beyond Mexico.

With BloxOne DDI’s cloud-native technology, an internet connection is all that is needed to have full visibility of BB&B Mexico’s infrastructure. This was not possible with the eight-year-old, legacy solution. “The response times when raising a ticket and then waiting for an assignment from the US team were delaying processes, which was negatively affecting our users’ experience,” says Moriyama.

Network Visibility, Access, and Management Anytime, Anywhere with BloxOne DDI
With BloxOne DDI, the work of IT is now more intuitive, and changes are made in around a minute. Routine tasks, such as assignments, user creation, and incident visibility are now reflected in near real time.

The ease and transparency of BloxOne DDI were key to the successful migration of the system. Although a cloud-managed solution was not a prerequisite, it proved valuable as having everything stored online allowed BB&B Mexico to minimize implementation costs. Plus, the ease with which the team at BB&B Mexico can perform DNS backups is another benefit.
Currently, BB&B Mexico’s DNS division is spread over two locations. The first, located at the headquarters in Mexico City, oversees connections to all of the central and southern parts of the country; the other location in Querétaro provides connections to the northern part of the country. “With a distributed, cloud-managed solution, support can be provided from anywhere,” says Bautista. “With BloxOne DDI, a secure internet connection is all that’s required to support and manage the network. If you have a cloud solution, you only need a username and password to access and provide support – that makes the work much easier.”

Security and Network Teams Work in Tandem to Strengthen Security Posture
BloxOne Threat Defense provides near real-time visibility of threat activity and is integrated with BloxOne DDI to provide Security Operations with important context around events, giving them a more holistic picture of threat activity across the network. The visibility provided by BloxOne Threat Defense simplifies security monitoring. Currently, BB&B Mexico’s cybersecurity team is in the process of implementing existing ecosystems, consisting of a FortiGate Firewall, MDM-type solutions, and XDR antivirus. While not every employee in the company has an assigned computer, the network protects around 350 users on both Windows and Mac computers. Each of these computers has BloxOne Endpoint installed, which protects them in and out of the office, preventing dangerous connections and data theft while VPN protects against spying on email communications.

BloxOne Threat Defense reporting offers BB&B Mexico greater visibility into malicious or high-risk activity within its environment. For example, it can identify applications that should not be running on a corporate network. “By using the BloxOne Threat Defense dashboards together with notifications we receive if something is happening on the network that shouldn’t be, we can make informed decisions; that’s how we’re better managing threats,” says Bautista.

BloxOne Threat facilitates the security and networking teams to work in tandem, mitigating the risk of any security incidents and maintaining network performance. This newfound ability to collaborate is particularly important for this small IT team.

“Every now and then, reports show applications that shouldn’t be running on a corporate network,” says Bautista. “BloxOne Threat Defense provides information about the users, their requests, and the number of queries made. This information can then be used to block unwanted traffic via the DNS. This is just one instance of how BloxOne Threat Defense has helped us remove things that shouldn’t be there and which may be compromising bandwidth and internet speeds.”

THE RESULT

Increased Productivity with More Flexible, Autonomous Management
BloxOne DDI and BloxOne Threat Defense provide BB&B Mexico’s IT team the freedom and time to build more projects and focus on other aspects of the user experience. This peace of mind translates into greater productivity and the flexibility to focus elsewhere on scheduled infrastructure upgrades and projects to better help stores, all of which add value to the business.
“BloxOne’s cloud management gives us freedom. We don’t have to depend on third parties,” says Bautista.

Peace of Mind, Security, and Ease of Use
BloxOne’s network and security solutions provide BB&B Mexico with easy-to-use DNS tools and effective security management, allowing it to define access policies that are then enforced by a firewall with default rules for each user.

“Not all DNS tools I’ve known have been so user friendly,” says Bautista. “They’re not always so easy to configure. With Infoblox, there is support through product documentation or in the Infoblox Customer Community where your questions can be answered and useful examples shared.”

A Future with Technology that Proves its Worth
For Moriyama, the value of technology is important but often difficult to demonstrate. “IT is an area that doesn’t directly generate a sale and often requires significant investment. The BloxOne solutions allow me to optimize resources while getting the most out of it. It’s also an area that people notice when things aren’t working but goes unnoticed when things are. Implementing Infoblox has allowed us to be more robust in our overall operation.”

BB&B Mexico’s investment in Infoblox opens the door to future integrations that can be tailored to the growth needs of the company. “It is important to have tools like this that allow us to demonstrate through different reports the importance of this investment in IT,” adds Moriyama, “and how these solutions can contribute to the future goals of the business.”