When first day of class is your peak season, connectivity can’t go down across 1,100 locations.

Barnes & Noble Education runs the BNC First Day program, ensuring students at more than 1,100 institutions have required course materials on day one of class. BNED partnered with Presidio to build the always-on network architecture that keeps stores, order management systems, and cloud platforms running without interruption.

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1,100+ physical and virtual bookstore locations on always-on network infrastructure
Monthly cloud cost savings driven by PRISM visibility and optimization
Day one guaranteed course material access for students, every semester, every location

THE OUTCOME

Barnes & Noble Education runs the BNC First Day program, ensuring students at more than 1,100 institutions have required course materials on day one of class. BNED partnered with Presidio to build the always-on network architecture that keeps stores, order management systems, and cloud platforms running without interruption, while PRISM brought cloud costs under control month over month.

HOW THEY GOT THERE

Presidio started with BNED’s business problem, not the technology. What does “always-on” actually mean for a company whose entire model depends on a single high-stakes deadline repeated across 1,100 locations simultaneously? That framing shaped every infrastructure decision. PRISM gave BNED detailed visibility into cloud consumption by location, workload, and time period.

WHY IT WORKED

BNED’s challenge wasn’t just technical complexity, it was the combination of massive geographic scale, hard transaction deadlines, and cloud costs growing faster than visibility allowed. Presidio addressed both sides: the reliability problem that could disrupt students on day one, and the financial problem quietly eroding technology ROI.