The number one goal of the hospitality industry is to please customers. Hotel chains are always looking for ways to go above and beyond to improve the customer experience. This regional hotel chain was looking to reinvent itself as a business destination. They had recently remodeled all of their meeting rooms and installed smart-TVs in order to attract conferences and on-site meetings. They also built a new on-site work center where guests could use their laptops in a designated workspace.

Upgrading Facilities & Technologies

In making these upgrades, the hotel chain knew they would also need to reevaluate their current network infrastructure. They knew that their current MPLS network would not deliver enough bandwidth to handle the increased traffic.

Just as important, managing the internet access and firewalls that were deployed at each site proved to be a bigger job than they would want their limited on-site IT staff to handle. With a mishmash of security policies, no centralized security strategy or administration, and a lack of confidence around their ability to monitor their security environment around the clock, the customer was concerned about being embarrassed by a breach.

With the chain in growth mode, they were looking for a scalable solution that could grow with them. As a result, this customer approached Nitel to:

• Increase bandwidth to support the new initiatives
• Simplify administration of their security environment
• Complement IT staff’s ability to keep an eye on network security

Choosing the Right SD-WAN Platform

Upon realizing that an SD-WAN solution would address the customer’s needs, they took time to examine which of Nitel’s SD-WAN platforms would best suit the customer. With multiple platforms to choose from, Nitel can create a more custom-tailored solution for customers. In this case, the platform that enabled a more user-friendly, robust analytics and reporting platform fit with what they were looking to accomplish.

The solution could easily accommodate the increased bandwidth the customer wanted – with the added benefit of delivering it over redundant access links that would provide better resiliency and uptime.

With Nitel’s integrated SD-Security, the customer would still have security policies carried out at each individual location, but they could be administered centrally, which would simplify administration and give them consistency across locations. This solution also brought a level of simplicity since the customer was also able to manage their network performance and security all through a single platform.

Through this solution the customer gained:

• Centralized management with reduced network complexity
• Increased visibility and management of application performance with built-in failover for multiple circuits
• Improved application performance
• SD-Security features layered over their network
  
  

Thanks to the solution designed by Nitel’s engineers, this customer was poised to continue its transformation by providing better technology solutions to its business customer while protecting their network efficiently and with ease.

Article by ATI partner Nitel & the Power of SD-WAN for Hospitality 


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