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Martello BLOG

Why some of the top hotels in the world turn to Martello to deliver exceptional High-Speed Internet to their guests.

We have all been there, a business trip or vacation comes up and you start doing online research to book a hotel for your stay. If you are like us, you tend to make your bookings online and peruse reviews and comments associated with the hotel that you are looking to book. As you are looking online, what do you care about? The thread count of the sheets on the bed? Maybe… Typically, after the location and onsite amenities, Internet performance is one of the top considerations that guests have when booking a hotel.

Hoteliers know that spotty high-speed Internet access (HSIA) affects their bottom line. Poor performance can dramatically impact the overall guest experience and is a significant influencer when it comes to guests making decisions regarding hotels.

So, how can you keep up with guest demand and deliver reliable HSIA? To keep up with demand and deliver reliable service under the pressures of real-time communications, hundreds of properties rely on Martello’s SD-WAN and UC Performance Management solutions.

Case Study: Conrad Dubai

“I was paying huge amounts for Internet with one Leased Line, and wished to substitute it with multiple ADSL Lines.” – Mahmoud Karaki Conrad Dubai

Challenge

The Conrad Dubai is a 51-storey luxury hotel, located in Dubai’s commercial center. As part of one of Hilton’s luxury brands, and with 555 rooms onsite, Conrad Dubai feels the pressure to deliver 24/7 HSIA to its guests. The reality is though that leased lines (i.e.: private circuits, private lines) are particularly expensive in Dubai, and the property was planning to replace its costly line with multiple lower bandwidth ADSL links. The move would provide considerable savings on a monthly basis. Yet, despite the savings, they were afraid that it would be at the expense of performance, which was an unacceptable risk. They continued to look for an alternative.

Solution

Using Martello’s Link Balancer enables organizations like Conrad Dubai to proactively manage traffic through multiple concurrent ISP or WAN links, and leverage unused bandwidth to avoid adding new links. Deploying a LBX device from Martello allowed the hotel to save on its monthly bandwidth. Adding more circuits can be done seamlessly and easily, on demand, without having to worry about unused bandwidth, and can be put to use from the very moment it is hooked up to the Link Balancer.

Why HSIA Matters to Hospitality

To keep up with guest demand and deliver reliable HSIA, hundreds of properties have come to rely on Martello’s SD-WAN Solutions.

SD-WAN: Affordable, Efficient HSIA

SD-WAN solutions like Martello’s provide flexible, affordable and efficient management of multiple Internet links. These solutions address the network performance challenges of real-time communications, transforming the guest experience. Using Internet links from multiple sources on multiple technologies, Internet access uptime can reach 99.999%, ensuring connectivity for demanding business customers and guaranteeing future business for hotels. There is an overall cost reduction by removing some of the more expensive links, such as T1’s, and combining them with low-cost DSL or cable modems. Properties can deliver on the promise of constant and reliable Internet access while reducing monthly operating costs.

Unified Communications (UC) Performance Management: Reliable Communications Around the Clock

Using link aggregation and SD-WAN technologies, hotel operators are able to efficiently monitor and maintain a state-of-the art network while at the same time saving time on the cost of bandwidth. By pairing that solution with performance management software, hotels can truly transform the guest experience by optimizing real-time traffic such as VoIP. Martello’s Vantage suite includes UC Network Health Testing and a network site qualification tool called UCScore, ensuring that hospitality providers can prevent, detect and address network problems impacting UC performance, and have them resolved before they can impact the guest experience.

See Martello at HTNG Europe – October 22 – 24 – Lisbon, Portugal

At Martello, we are excited to attend HTNG Europe taking place on October 22 – 24 in Lisbon Portugal. At the show you can find us at table #9 at the conference. If you are planning on attending HTNG Europe, be sure to drop by and see us or book some time to meet with us onsite.

Additional Resources

In 2018, Martello introduced ATLAS SD-WAN to the North American market to provide affordable and simple, business-centric network solutions to enterprises. ATLAS is a full encompassing SD-WAN solution with security, optimization, VPN and failover components. This modular suite offers a subscription-based pricing structure ideal for enterprises and service providers alike.

In the last few weeks, our team has been travelling the world to initiate the next phase in the expansion of ATLAS SD-WAN.

Starting in September, we were in Paris for the SD-WAN Summit, a yearly conference regrouping the top minds in the SD-WAN marketplace. There, we announced our new distributor agreement with WCS Europe, a strategic partner in the region. Shortly after, Martello announced that Antwerp-based TrueGEN would carry Martello’s SD-WAN technologies further into the European market.

Now, Martello also turns to Dubai and the Middle-East, with the 38th GITEX Technology Week, held at the Dubai World Trade Center on October 14-18. The Middle-East has always been a successful market for Martello, as well as its subsidiary Elfiq Networks, which develops and markets ATLAS SD-WAN.

On the heels of receiving Frost & Sullivan’s Leadership Award for Network Performance Management and TMC’s Internet Telephony SD-WAN Product of the Year Award, ATLAS SD-WAN is now available in Europe and the Middle-East. With this expanded portfolio, Martello offers LTE/4G/3G cellular connectivity through embedded cellular modems, providing a more reliable failover option at the edge.

Providing simpler network solutions has always been at the core of Martello’s promise. Our clients do business all around the world, and their wide area networks reflect that reality. By expanding ATLAS SD-WAN to two new regions, Martello intends to keep that promise.

At Martello, we always look at September and the return of school as the perfect time to take stock, brush up on some of our skills or gain a better understanding of a subject that we feel a little uncertain of. Maybe you feel the same as we do and have had some questions about SD-WAN and the BIG impact that it can have on your network. Below we have given you a primer on SD-WAN and what it can mean for your UC solution.

The reality is, if you are in the networking space, you already know that delivering reliable network performance is difficult and costly to achieve. The cloud is creating increased network complexity and carrier networks and WAN connectivity haven’t kept pace with the exploding demand for bandwidth. Real-time services are complicating everything because rich media, streaming and UC require costly bandwidth for good performance. Buying the ‘Rolls Royce’ of bandwidth doesn’t help either because it can leave you dependent on just one Internet service provider (ISP) which can leave you vulnerable to outages. How do you manage costs and deliver the service quality users demand?

Software Defined-WAN (SD-WAN) Solutions make the task of managing and optimizing competing network traffic simple and cost effective. With SD-WAN, you control your current bandwidth needs through established policies and prioritizations allowing you to diversify providers, links and technologies to add flexibility – optimizing your network performance.

What does that mean for your UC solution:

Uptime… All the Time
Carrying your network using a single ISP is risky and can get expensive. Using multiple concurrent ISP links though without the proper technology in place is a gamble you shouldn’t take. Using SD-WAN, you can take advantage of carrier diversity because it balances and maximizes the use of costly private circuits by running multiple SIP trunks on multiple ISPs, and dynamic failover ensures you’re not impacted by carrier outages.

Ample Bandwidth for UC – at a Lower Cost
SD-WAN reduces your outlay on bandwidth. Many smaller companies delay the deployment of a UC solution that would improve their business because of the high cost of dedicated MPLS circuits. SD-WAN solutions make it possible to lower bandwidth costs while achieving better results. The freedom to mix and match network technologies and ISPs gives you more control over your costs as well — you’re not dependent on one provider.

Prioritizing UC
Your network is strained by user activity around the clock, and it can be hard to prioritize bandwidth to mission critical applications. Imagine an office where one employee is streaming a FIFA soccer game while customer support is fielding a call from a customer. SD-WAN gives you control over how bandwidth is used, by setting policies that establish prioritization. Policies allow you to identify which applications get a higher bandwidth priority without compromise. SD-WAN solutions can divert less bandwidth-intensive applications to lower-cost DSL circuits so that higher-bandwidth applications, like UC, can operate smoothly.

Always Optimizing for the Best Experience
Taking advantage of ISP diversity keeps costs in check and decreases downtime. SD-WAN behaves according to the policies you’ve set for your organization, but it is flexible so can also make smart and quick decisions on the fly, choosing which packets take priority and which don’t. A resilient infrastructure with managed SD-WAN services can monitor the health of each ISP and distribute the required bandwidth accordingly. If a link fails to respond appropriately, it is removed from the available list – being tested until it is ready.

Delivering reliable network performance is a constant challenge, but with our primer you’ll know how to build a scalable, flexible, and affordable network infrastructure to position your business for success. When it comes to building an agile network, investing in SD-WAN is an obvious choice.