Case Study · Retail, Luxury Department Stores
Keep the Network You Have.
Skip the $28.0M Refresh.
A landmark North American luxury retailer keeps its entire 12,139-device Cisco estate fully supported through CovrEDGE Sparing-as-a-Service for about $547K a year, avoiding a $28.0M forced refresh: $21.1M in replacement hardware plus $6.9M in mandatory Catalyst Center licensing.
The Client
A landmark of North American luxury retail
For more than 150 years, the client has been one of the most recognized names in North American luxury retail, anchored by an iconic Fifth Avenue flagship and a portfolio of storied department-store banners.
Its corporate lineage traces to the oldest company in North America, chartered in 1670. Across a large multi-store estate, the selling floor runs on Cisco: point-of-sale, mobile clienteling, guest Wi-Fi, and back-of-house systems all depend on access-layer switching and wireless that has to stay up every trading hour.
That makes network availability a direct revenue concern, and it makes the size of the installed estate substantial: more than 12,139 Cisco devices, spanning 2,252 access switches, 9,443 access points, and 444 wireless controllers across the store fleet.
The pressure to replace it was already building. Cisco had declined to renew SMARTnet on part of the estate the year before, pushing that hardware toward End-of-Support, and a larger portion faced the same denied renewal in the current year. The OEM’s answer was to buy new, and Cisco pushed hard for it. The client did not want to tear out working equipment. What they wanted was a plan to keep the infrastructure already in place supported and running.
The client is anonymized in this document. Figures are drawn from the account’s own installed-base and upgrade-path worksheet. Replacement hardware and Catalyst Center licensing use Cisco’s current-generation pricing at the account’s negotiated discounts, 62% off hardware and 25% off licensing.
The Challenge
When the OEM stops supporting the gear, the only OEM answer is to replace it
Nearly the entire estate is past Cisco’s End-of-Sale date, with models that stopped being sold anywhere from 2006 to 2023. As gear moves past End-of-Support, OEM SMARTnet coverage is no longer available on it.
At that point the OEM path has only one destination: rip out working hardware and replace it with current-generation Catalyst 9000, which then carries a mandatory Catalyst Center subscription billed on a recurring term. For this estate that is $21.1M in new hardware plus $6.9M in three-year licensing, a $28.0M event, for capacity the stores already have and use every day.
The Approach
Support the estate, replace a unit only when one fails Sparing-as-a-Service
CovrEDGE keeps the existing estate fully supported and replaces hardware on a next-business-day basis, but only when a unit actually fails, drawing from a managed spares pool.
That is the difference from a traditional OEM support contract. SMARTnet charges a per-device fee on every unit, every year, whether or not it ever fails. Sparing-as-a-Service prices coverage against the estate and delivers replacement on demand, which is why the annual cost lands at $547K for 12,139 devices, well below a per-device OEM contract and a rounding error against the $28.0M cost to replace them.
- Next-business-day hardware replacement across access switching, access points, and wireless controllers.
- Coverage on End-of-Sale and End-of-Support gear the OEM will no longer support, so proven hardware stays in service.
- Replacement only when a unit fails, from a managed spares pool, not a standing fee on every device.
- No forced migration to a subscription-bearing platform, and no Catalyst Center licensing to carry.
Sparing-as-a-Service also includes free hardware upgrades from the managed spares pool. Because most of this estate performs simple Layer 2 access, the spares are interchangeable, so as part of the engagement twelve of the oldest End-of-Support units were replaced with newer Catalyst 3650s. That trimmed the customer’s aging-hardware footprint at no additional cost, and with no change to the flat annual coverage.
The Results
$547,345 a year against a $28,025,358 replacement path
Keeping the estate under CovrEDGE costs $547,345 per year. The OEM alternative, replacing the End-of-Sale gear with current-generation hardware and adding the mandatory three-year Catalyst Center licensing, totals $28,025,358. Over a three-year window that is $1,642,035 of CovrEDGE against $28,025,358 to rip and replace, 94% less.
| Equipment family | Units | CovrEDGE / yr | Avoided hardware | Avoided licensing (3-yr) | Total avoided |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aironet access points | 9,443 | $302,176 | $11,621,730 | $1,884,941 | $13,506,670 |
| Catalyst 3560 access switches | 1,191 | $128,688 | $4,206,425 | $3,546,477 | $7,752,902 |
| Catalyst 2960 access switches | 986 | $52,856 | $2,564,958 | $1,295,784 | $3,860,742 |
| Wireless LAN controllers | 444 | $56,407 | $2,428,743 | $0 | $2,428,743 |
| Catalyst 3850 access switches | 21 | $3,344 | $157,632 | $48,816 | $206,448 |
| Catalyst 2950 access switches | 19 | $492 | $67,447 | $59,535 | $126,982 |
| Catalyst 3750 access switches | 5 | $225 | $65,200 | $9,018 | $74,218 |
| Catalyst 3550 access switches | 12 | $523 | $33,228 | $35,424 | $68,652 |
| Current Catalyst 9000 switches | 18 | $2,634 | $0 | $0 | $0 |
| Total | 12,139 | $547,345 | $21,145,363 | $6,879,995 | $28,025,358 |
Avoided hardware is the current-generation replacement for each End-of-Sale line, priced 62% below Cisco list. Avoided licensing is the three-year Catalyst Center (DNX Essentials) subscription each replacement would require, priced 25% below list; wireless controllers carry no separate license line here. Current-generation switches already in the estate are covered by CovrEDGE but carry no forced-refresh, so they show no avoided cost.
The Hardware Itself
End-of-Sale is a sales date, not a failure date
Some of this equipment reached End-of-Sale as long ago as 2006, nearly 20 years ago, and it is still running the selling floor today. End-of-Sale is a decision by the vendor to stop selling a product, not a sign the hardware has stopped working.
Retail access switches and access points are built for long, reliable service lives, and this estate is proof of it: thousands of units, End-of-Sold across nearly two decades, still carrying point-of-sale and store Wi-Fi every day. CovrEDGE keeps that proven hardware supported and replaces the occasional failure on a next-business-day basis, so the network keeps running long after the OEM has moved on. The forced-refresh path would discard all of that usable service life at once.
Owned Asset vs. Recurring Liability
A subscription doesn’t end at one term
The $6.9M in Catalyst Center licensing the refresh would add is a three-year term, and it renews. Every three years it must be repurchased to keep the platform supported, on top of the $21.1M already spent replacing hardware that was working fine.
CovrEDGE has no such tail. The estate stays an owned, deterministic asset the retailer already paid for, supported for a flat annual fee, refreshed only when the business decides to, not when a vendor lifecycle forces the issue.
- Flat, predictable annual cost
- Covers gear the OEM will no longer support
- Replacement only when a unit fails
- No subscription to renew, no forced refresh
- Multi-million-dollar capital event up front
- Mandatory Catalyst Center subscription
- Subscription renews every three years
- The lifecycle clock resets and repeats
For $547K a year, the stores keep the network they already own and trust, instead of a $28.0M capital event with a subscription bolted to it.
Financial Context
Capital that stays in the business
For a retailer, network availability is revenue, and capital is finite. Every dollar not spent ripping out a working network is a dollar for stores, inventory, and the customer experience. CovrEDGE keeps 12,139 devices supported for roughly 1.95% per year of what replacing them would cost.
Why These Numbers Are Conservative
The comparison favors the OEM at every turn
- The OEM path is credited with deep discounts. Avoided hardware is priced 62% below Cisco list and licensing 25% below list, generous rates for a deal this size. Even so, keeping the estate under CovrEDGE costs a small fraction of replacing it.
- Only one licensing term counted. Avoided licensing counts a single three-year Catalyst Center term. In practice it renews, so the real avoided cost grows every cycle.
- Sparing-as-a-Service against a full contract. CovrEDGE is priced as replacement-on-demand, not the per-device OEM support fee on all 12,139 units, which would be far higher.
- Refresh labor and disruption excluded. The $28.0M figure is hardware and licensing only. It does not count the installation, configuration, and store-by-store downtime a rip-and-replace of this size would require.
The Bottom Line
$547K a year to keep 12,139 devices running, instead of $28.0M to replace them
The hardware works. CovrEDGE Sparing-as-a-Service keeps it supported and replaces the rare failure on demand, so a working retail network stays online for a small fraction of the cost of tearing it out. The same model applies to every End-of-Sale Cisco estate across the store fleet.
Working on a refresh, renewal, or quote right now?
Send it to Edgeium for a free second opinion. We'll review cost, availability, and support options and show where the free market may help — before you commit the budget.