Enterprise Wi-Fi provider Aruba Networks announced three customer wins: Oil States International; two hotels in Seattle; and the Fashion Institute of Technology’s New York campus. In the case of FIT, which is part of the state university system, the coverage involves buildings with an average height of 10 stories, a fast-growing bring-your-own-device issue with student, staff and guest devices (including a museum that draws 100,000 visitors per year) and the challenge of providing high-bandwidth service in an urban market with substantial interference. FIT’s new wireless local area network will ultimately include more than 1,000 Aruba AP-135 access points, controllers, Aruba’s network management system and its ClearPass access management system.
Oil States, a global oilfield services provider, is already using Aruba’s indoor and outdoor APs and controllers in several locations through deployment with technology solutions company iT1 of Scottsdale, Ariz. Doug Mullane, network manager for Oil States, said the company has seen an 80% reduction in wireless support request calls with the Aruba deployment.
Aruba said it also deployed networks at the Grand Hyatt Seattle and the Hyatt at Olive 8, as an upgrade to the facilities’ former Wi-Fi networks. In addition to improving guest access, those deployments also allow hotel staff to use more than 100 Apple devices to communicate with Hyatt’s guest request system.
Underscoring the importance of Wi-Fi in the hospitality environment, Meritus Hotels & Resorts said that they will provide free Wi-Fi to guests across all of their properties located in cities across China, Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia. Guests will be able to connect up to three wireless devices at no charge, although the company did say that users looking to stream high-definition video content or download movies will be offered a high-bandwidth option at “competitive rates.”
Domestically, Orlando-based Nickelodeon Suites Resort, which provides an experience aimed at fans of the children’s TV channel, said that it has deployed hundreds of PowerCloud Systems‘ Wi-Fi access points to its rooms as it sought to improve network performance and reduce costs. PowerCloud provides cloud-based network management of what it calls “enterprise-Wi-Fi-as-a-service” without an on-site network controller. PowerCloud said that 222 APs were installed in a week while the hotel was fully occupied as the pre-configured APs only required being plugged in to the hotel’s pre-existing Ethernet connections. Managed service provider Smart Hospitality was able to remotely register the APs for security, assign names and locations and from its offices in California, direct the installers as to placement. Once plugged in, the APs connected the to cloud for security settings and provisioning protocols, and then started broadcasting their signals.
The company ran a Kickstarter investment campaign last month and raised $75,000 for its Skydog home Wi-Fi network router and companion app for managing home networks, leading the company to expand its offering to larger homes and small businesses.
Meanwhile, Ruckus Wireless said that St. Josephs University in Philadelphia has upgraded its Wi-Fi infrastructure to Ruckus’ Smart Wi-Fi product.
The university’s three-member IT infrastructure team made the installation in less than a week, according to Jim Brady, assistant director of network services for the 8,800-student campus. St. Josephs has deployed 100 Ruckus APs and plans to install another 150 in the near future. The current network covers two five-story student housing buildings with about 500 residents each; two academic buildings, and the 10,000-sf student center. The student center is covered by 16 APs and each student housing tower has about 30. Nearly 20 more buildings and outdoor areas will eventually also be covered with Ruckus Wi-Fi.
“When BYOD became a bigger concern for us, we realized our legacy network wasn’t handling demand as well as needed,” said Brady. He added that a growing number of students and staff are using multiple mobile devices; the Ruckus network supports about 600 concurrent clients during peak times with 30 to 60 megabits per second uplink and downlink speeds, the company said.
Brady said that the network has been in place since January, and “so far we’ve had no issues whatsoever.”
