{"id":7122,"date":"2021-06-03T16:20:16","date_gmt":"2021-06-03T15:20:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/north-america\/?p=7122"},"modified":"2021-06-18T09:34:40","modified_gmt":"2021-06-18T08:34:40","slug":"circa-resort-and-casino-standardizes-on-aruba-to-deliver-transcendent-guest-experiences","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/north-america\/2021\/06\/03\/circa-resort-and-casino-standardizes-on-aruba-to-deliver-transcendent-guest-experiences\/","title":{"rendered":"Circa Resort and Casino standardizes on Aruba to deliver transcendent guest experiences"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Circa Resort and Casino has deployed a secure Aruba ESP-based network at its new 1.25 million-square-foot downtown Las Vegas hotel.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Paul Ballard, CIO at Circa<\/em><\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, has announced that\u00a0Circa Resort and Casino, the first new downtown Las Vegas hotel and entertainment venue in over 40 years, has selected an end-to-end\u00a0Aruba ESP-based network\u00a0to deliver unique, immersive and engaging experiences at the 35-story, 777-room sports-themed property, as well as to satellite locations throughout Nevada, Colorado, and other jurisdictions, while saving nearly half a million dollars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To create an energetic and transcendent atmosphere that draws on the original spirit of Las Vegas and updated for the digital age, Circa is using a combination of Aruba\u2019s wired, wireless and security solutions to provide the performance and bandwidth required to power its unique amenities. This includes the Stadium Swim, a pool deck with amphitheater-style lounging terraces facing a 143-foot video display, and a three-story Sportsbook, featuring a 78 million pixel video display divided into 42 screens with a 1,000-person viewing capacity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In collaboration with trusted integration partner\u00a0Evotek, Circa evaluated prominent networking competitors, as well as Aruba, to gain an intelligent, reliable and flexible network. Ultimately, Aruba offered the most comprehensive, automated solution for helping Circa bring its hospitality vision to life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDelivering today\u2019s socially driven premier entertainment experiences in Las Vegas is a 24\/7 endeavor,\u201d said Paul Ballard, CIO at Circa. \u201cAruba supplied the full stack of AI-enabled wired and wireless networking innovations essential for running a successful operation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Working with Evotek, Circa deployed a future-ready wireless network comprised of\u00a0Aruba\u2019s Wi-Fi 6 indoor access points (APs),\u00a0outdoor APs,\u00a0hospitality APs and mobility controllers. For wired networking, Circa implemented Aruba\u2019s aggregation switches at the Edge and\u00a0CX Series switches\u00a0in the data center.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beyond enabling on-site multicasting, Circa is providing modern in-room experiences such as connected lighting and IP TVs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDeploying Aruba\u2019s wireless to guest rooms not only addresses user expectations, it also saved us nearly US$500,000 versus installing a gigabyte passive optical network (GPON),\u201d said Ballard. \u201cAruba\u2019s licensing model was also significantly more attractive.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To unify and streamline wired and wireless administration, Circa adopted\u00a0AirWave\u00a0for network management along with\u00a0ClearPass\u00a0for network access control (NAC) and policy management. The company also implemented\u00a0User Experience Insight (UXI)\u00a0for Wi-Fi incident detection using AIOps to pinpoint issues that require immediate attention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn addition to supporting unparalleled guest experiences, digital employee solutions, and IoT-enabled building maintenance systems, we supply network connectivity to thousands of third-party vendors,\u201d said John Palma, Manager of Information Technology Network Engineering at Circa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhether it\u2019s mobile POS in our dining areas or digital gaming systems in our casino spaces, Aruba ensures we have the ability to apply consistent policies and granular security to visualize, automate and control who accesses our network.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Circa\u2019s new network also supports digital experiences in the resort\u2019s\u00a0Garage Mahal\u00a0transportation hub. The facility includes purpose-built solutions for hosting ride-sharing providers and will eventually serve as the downtown terminal for the\u00a0Boring Company’s Vegas Loop project\u00a0seeking to outfit Las Vegas with high-speed transportation tunnels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWith our Aruba network, we can provide Wi-Fi to our guests and to transportation providers in Garage Mahal, as well as deploy the latest in security solutions and connected elevators to help keep everyone safe in transit,\u201d Palma said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Ballard, another considerable benefit of partnering with Aruba is superior technical support.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe challenges of opening a new property during a pandemic can\u2019t be understated,\u201d he said. \u201cNo matter what time of day or night, Aruba provided us the right level of support resources for resolving issues quickly, which helped us stay on track to meet our opening day timeline.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moving forward, Circa will continue evaluating Aruba solutions that include AIOps, data-driven analytics, and other innovations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOverall, our Aruba partnership gives us the flexibility to quickly take advantage of new business opportunities,\u201d said Ballard. \u201cThis helps us distinguish ourselves from others in Las Vegas, which is a significant competitive advantage.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We asked Paul Ballard, CIO at Circa, further questions about the project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How has Aruba allowed you to exceed customer expectations?<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our Aruba-based network is the backbone for all of our customer experiences, from the gaming floor itself to our multi-million pixel displays at Stadium Swim and Circa Sports.  We also use our network for audio throughout the casino as well as programmable exterior lighting displays. Everything runs on the Aruba backbone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What has impressed you most about the capabilities of\u00a0AirWave\u00a0and\u00a0ClearPass?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ability to manage access via user and device profiles made deployment during the construction of Circa significantly less error-prone and tedious.  We also used Terminal Access Controller Access-Control System (TACACS) to secure access to our network devices and provide audit features that were incredibly important during the construction phases when we had multiple vendors all working on the network at the same time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

ClearPass is used to authenticate both internal users via Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP) connection to Active Directory and also a captive portal for public and hotel guest access.  The combination of these two products provided a fairly seamless model for managing all network access. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

How effective has\u00a0User Experience Insight (UXI)\u00a0been for pinpointing issues that require immediate attention?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We have used the Aruba User Experience Insight (UXI) sensors to help monitor network performance, but I\u2019d say we\u2019re still in the early stages of this.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

How confident are you in the security features offered by the solutions?<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We\u2019re confident in the security features not as a standalone solution, but in conjunction with the other security products and features we implement to protect our network and data.  Providing a seamless access model helps tremendously in the day-to-day management of the network. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What was the best aspect of the support provided to you by Aruba?<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The best aspect of support was the quick escalation provided when we had issues with our AV network.  Our reps brought in the Aruba Customer Engineering team and we got direct access to the software development team to help identify and fix the issue resulting in a firmware fix.  We were never left feeling like we were on our own dealing with issues after the implementation was complete. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why did you choose Aruba as your provider?<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The choice was based on the combination of price point and features.  We went with Aruba based on the integration of the Wi-Fi network with the wired network and consolidation of management tools.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Circa Resort and Casino has deployed a secure Aruba ESP-based network at its new 1.25 million-square-foot downtown Las Vegas hotel. Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, has announced that\u00a0Circa Resort and Casino, the first new downtown Las Vegas hotel and entertainment venue in over 40 years, has selected an end-to-end\u00a0Aruba ESP-based network\u00a0to deliver unique, immersive […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":7124,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,510,50,25,514],"tags":[193,2035,2036,1461,224],"class_list":["post-7122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-case-studies","category-case-study-newsletter","category-east-coast","category-hospitality","category-used","tag-aruba","tag-circa","tag-circa-resort-and-casino","tag-hospitality","tag-las-vegas"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/north-america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/north-america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/north-america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/north-america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/north-america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7122"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/north-america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7122\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7532,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/north-america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7122\/revisions\/7532"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/north-america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7124"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/north-america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/north-america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/north-america\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}