ABU DHABI, UAE – 06 April, 2015 -
Desert Islands Resort & Spa by Anantara, part of the Minor Hotel
Group and regarded as one of the most luxurious Abu Dhabi resorts, has
upgraded its wireless network with Aruba Networks’ 802.11ac Wi-Fi across
its property. The new network has enabled the hotel to provide gigabit
Wi-Fi connectivity to guests and allowed staff to utilize a host of
business-critical applications with greater ease.
“Although we had
a legacy system in place to offer our guests Wi-Fi speeds of up to
2Mbps, we wanted to deliver a standardized quality of service across all
our properties,” said Harikumar Nair, Director Information Technology
at Anantara Hotels, Resorts & Spas, Abu Dhabi. “Besides catering to
the high-speed connectivity demands of its guests, Desert Islands also
needed a robust Wi-Fi network that could support back-end systems and
the bandwidth-hungry applications that were being used by the operations
team to do their jobs more efficiently.”
“We had already
made strategic investments in our wired network infrastructure. However
we were unable to achieve optimal performance across the network because
of the performance restrictions arising from the wireless portion,” he
stated. Desert Islands had also recently acquired greater bandwidth from
its telecom provider and was eager to extend the benefits to its
guests.
Mr. Nair
continued, “As a premier location for events, particularly for the
Government and public sector clients, our hotel regularly hosts
conferences where hundreds of attendees connect to the wireless network
via iPads and smart devices at once. Combined with the huge volume of
devices used by regular hotel guests as well as hotel staff, the total
number of devices connecting at any one time can put an immense strain
on the network. We needed an infrastructure that could handle the
increasing volume and density of devices while delivering the consistent
speed and performance that our customers and our staff expect.”
Anantara Group’s
IT department, owners and other key stakeholders, conducted a thorough
analysis of solutions from a number of vendors. As an IT veteran, Mr.
Nair was already aware of Aruba Networks and was particularly impressed
by the coverage that Aruba’s 802.11ac solution could deliver across the
hotel’s guest rooms and public areas. The decision makers were also well
aware of Aruba Networks’ position as one of the leading providers of
802.11ac wireless technologies.
Mr. Nair said,
“While we had a pressing need for a better wireless solution, we pride
ourselves on providing the very best quality of products and services.
We wanted to take our time to ensure that we selected both, the highest
quality and most innovative 802.11ac solution available to meet our
current requirements and provide a future-ready infrastructure.”
Working directly
with Aruba Networks, Desert Islands' IT team conducted a Proof of
Concept (PoC). The IT team used the PoC for a live conference with over
500 attendees successfully. While the initial time frame set for the
project was two months, in order to meet the expected surge in occupancy
during the 2014 Eid break, the entire deployment was completed in
approximately half the time.
Graeme Kane,
Sales Manager, Hospitality at Aruba Networks said, “To remain
competitive, hotels in the region need to leverage a smarter, adaptive
wireless network infrastructure that delivers stable, simple, smart,
secure Wi-Fi access to thousands of devices at a time and supports
mobile collaboration for staff. By installing the latest wireless
network technologies from Aruba Networks, Anantara has demonstrated its
leadership in providing an exceptional mobile experience for its guests
and employees.”
In all, Anantara
used a mix of Aruba Wi-Fi Access Points (APs) to cover the guest rooms
and 802.11ac indoor and outdoor APs to cover the extensive public areas.
To manage all of the APs across the immense property, Anantara’s IT
team decided to utilize Aruba's 7210 Mobility Controller, which is
optimized for 802.11ac. The Aruba solution allowed Desert Islands to
support the highest device densities and maximize Wi-Fi coverage while
providing wired-like connectivity. Aruba’s patented ClientMatchTM technology in the Mobility Controller
eliminates sticky clients by continuously gathering session performance
metrics from mobile devices and using this information to intelligently
steer each one to the closest AP and best radio on the WLAN. Providing
faster network connections for individual clients translates to better
overall wireless performance.
The flexibility
and high degree of control offered by the Aruba Mobility Controller have
helped Desert Islands monetize its Wi-Fi network. “As Wi-Fi is now
viewed as a basic amenity, we now offer all guests a free basic
connection equivalent to the maximum bandwidth of our old network,” said
Mr. Nair. “The controller has allowed us to implement and easily manage
a tiered system providing the option for a ‘premium service’ to our
guests at greater speeds for a charge. Also, the controller’s ability to
centrally manage all of the APs has drastically cut down the time and
effort required for administration.”
According to Mr.
Nair, perhaps the most important benefit of the new Aruba network has
been its ability to help his team realize the full potential of their
network investments. “We are very happy with the new network’s
performance. Aruba offers plenty of opportunities to grow this solution
with the evolving needs of our guests and staff in order to ensure that
we continue to deliver the excellent quality of service that our brand
is renowned for,” concluded Mr. Nair.
