On the subject of business, Alex Terry is no gambling man. He needs a network he can absolutely rely on. Though his network was working fine, Terry, director of in formation technology for the Mandalay Resort Group in Las Vegas, was looking for something more.

"There was nothing broken about our network," says Terry, "but we were missing out on a whole lot of revenue, and we had an opportunity to bring in that revenue with a very reasonable investment."

When the Mandalay Resort Group's Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino first opened its doors in March 1999, it had a considerably smaller convention center than it does today. Mandalay Bay management had an agreement with a local Internet service provider through which the resort and casino were provided with hardware and bandwidth, a couple of T-1 lines ran out onto the convention center floor, and everyone was happy-except for Terry and his team.

The ISP was taking a large percentage, and Terry felt that money should be staying in house.

Moreover, in 2001, Mandalay Bay announced that it would be opening a new, much larger convention center. The hotel had been spending a significant amount of money for access and services to its convention customers, and that cost in the new center promised to be quite a bit more. The potential income for Mandalay Bay holding on to that revenue also was considerably more.

In early 2002, Terry began to do some research. The result is that today Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino has deployed in its new 1.5million-square-foot convention center, and throughout its resort and casino, a visitor based networking (VBN) solution from Nortel Networks. Mandalay Bay is the owner of that network, and thus reaps the rewards of the revenue it generates.

Reliability, of course, was still a prime directive. "On the trade show floor," says Terry, "I can't easily explain to someone who's paid thousands of dollars to demo their product that the network is down."

Lost revenue was also important. "I began speaking with the general manager about providing these services ourselves," Terry continues, "suggesting that we put up the capital and then we keep 100% of the revenue. So it was decided that our IT department would service the new facility.

"We wanted to be the most high-tech convention center in Las Vegas. We wanted to offer our convention clients anything they needed as far as Internet and data were concerned. We wanted the ability to go in and drop the amount of bandwidth needed, wherever needed, but we didn't want to have to bring a T-1 to every booth. I also needed a network that would mesh with the existing skill set of our staff and with our existing network."

Terry looked at the products of three vendors. He settled on the Nortel Networks Shasta 5000 Broadband Service Node (BSN). The Shasta 5000 BSN has the capacity to deliver customized IP services to up to 32,000 active users at any given moment.

The transport underlying Mandalay Bay's VBN is based on Nortel Networks' optical Ethernet solution-operating on a resilient and simplified Ethernet-based network infrastructure. Mandalay Resort Group had a corporate Ethernet-over-fiber metro area network between its five Strip properties that had previously been upgraded to Nortel Networks Passport 8600s. The Passport 8600s are scalable to 256 Gbps for the performance and quality of service required for Mandalay Bay's differentiated business-critical applications.

The ability to respond to a wide range of convention customers at once is of prime importance to Terry and the hotel. The resort has four levels of multipurpose space, breakout rooms to simultaneously accommodate 75 gatherings, nearly one million square feet of exhibition space and a 100,000-square-foot mega-ballroom.

VARYING CUSTOMER NEEDS

The intelligent centerpiece of the VBN, the Shasta 5000 BSN, combines both network transport and high-touch IP services on a single platform with a set of built-in IP-service processing tools. These services are provisioned from within the network, meaning the Mandalay Bay IT team can respond to a steady turnover of client needs quickly and cost-efficiently.

The Mandalay Bay Convention Center simultaneously hosts a diverse array of clients-high-tech companies, fast-food chains, ski exhibits, automobile manufacturers-each with a unique set of service requirements, from Web casting, streaming video and data, virtual private network over the Internet, a variety of accesses to showcase products, to e-mail access. The ability to customize services is critical.

Terry also gets requests from customers for secure access to various sites within the convention center. "That's something the other convention centers in Las Vegas can't do without having to deploy another switch. With our solution, we can configure any amount of bandwidth we want, anywhere we want.

"No reconfiguration was necessary during deployment," Terry adds. "The corporate network and the Shasta don't touch; bandwidth goes straight from the service provider to Shasta."

More than 60 Nortel Networks Business Policy Switches (BPS) help maximize the output and dependability of the Mandalay network. The BPSs are 24-port, high-density, stackable 10/100 Mbps switches with quality-of-service features. They prioritize the network traffic flow and enhance network reliability and availability.

"We have all the bandwidth and all the functions of T-1 service without having to expand T-1 lines," says Mark Turek, senior network engineer for the Mandalay Bay Convention Center. "We have firewall and routing capabilities, scalability and versatility. This network will basically do anything we tell it to."

"Our return on investment has been fantastic," says Terry. "Now all we pay for is the cost of the bandwidth, and everything else is gravy."

WIRELESS DATA SERVICES

The benefits of Mandalay Bay's new network will also extend beyond the convention center.

"Most of our visitors these days," says Turek, "generally can't afford to be out of touch with the office when they come to Las Vegas; they can't be without data services. We can now provide them with the mobility to make their lives seamless while they're away."

"Our old business center provided Internet access through the local ISR" says Terry. "There were only a few PCs available for rent, and they were always in use. Now we have a larger business center, and soon our guests will have self-service Internet access. They can sit in some public 'hotspots' and tie back to the Shasta.

"Our guests will be able to enter their credit card numbers or room numbers, open a port into our wireless network, and select 30 minutes or an hour of Internet access." This wireless service is currently being deployed and is also offered through a Nortel Networks VBN, powered by the Shasta 5000 BSN. The Shasta's service-creation system allows hospitality operators to earn additional revenue by configuring different levels of bandwidth to different ports, as well as account and bill for a subscriber's usage throughout the facility.

Today, Terry is glad he did not wait for his network to break before realizing the potential of in-house ownership. "Only recently has the casino industry realized the value and potential of information technology, in bringing in this solution, we've shown that an IT department can make money and be a profit center rather than a cost center."

The Nortel network

Nortel Networks' visitor-based networking (VBN) enables high-speed wireline or wireless Internet access for PCs or hand-held devices. The VBN solution is based on Nortel Networks' fully interoperable portfolio of IP switches and WLAN devices. VBN users are directed to a secure portal and may opt for either pay-by-bandwidth or pay-by-time services. The VBN portal supports customer-initiated credit card and debit billing. The VBN solution comprises the Nortel Networks Shasta 5000 broadband service node, Passport 8600 routing switch, WLAN access point 2200 and the BayStack portfolio of Ethernet switches.

For more information from Nortel Networks: www.rsleads.com/401cn-256

COPYRIGHT 2004 Nelson Publishing
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group