Circa Resort and Casino, which opened in October, has selected an edge services platform-based network from Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, to keep guests and staff connected. The network will be installed at the 35-story, 777-room sports-themed Vegas property as well as at satellite locations throughout Nevada, Colorado and other jurisdictions. The company expects the network will save Circa nearly half a million dollars.
Circa is using a combination of Aruba’s wired, wireless and security solutions to power its amenities, including the Stadium Swim—a pool deck with amphitheater-style lounging terraces facing a 143-foot video display—and a three-story Sportsbook, which has a 78 million pixel video display divided into 42 screens with a 1,000-person viewing capacity.
“Delivering today’s socially driven premier entertainment experiences in Las Vegas is a 24/7 endeavor,” said Paul Ballard, chief information officer at Circa. “Aruba supplied the full stack of [artificial intelligence]-enabled wired and wireless networking innovations essential for running a successful operation.”
Working with integration partner Evotek, Circa deployed a wireless network comprised of Aruba’s WiFi 6 indoor access points, outdoor APs, hospitality APs and mobility controllers. For wired networking, Circa implemented Aruba’s aggregation switches at the edge and CX Series switches in the data center.
Beyond enabling onsite multicasting, Circa is providing connected lighting and internet protocol TVs for guestrooms. “Deploying Aruba’s wireless to guestrooms not only addresses user expectations, it also saved us nearly $500,000 versus installing a gigabyte passive optical network,” said Ballard. “Aruba’s licensing model was also significantly more attractive.”
To unify and streamline wired and wireless administration, Circa adopted AirWave for network management along with ClearPass for network access control and policy management. The company also implemented User Experience Insight for WiFi incident detection using AIOps to pinpoint issues that require immediate attention.
“In addition to supporting ... digital employee solutions and IoT-enabled building maintenance systems, we supply network connectivity to thousands of third-party vendors,” said John Palma, manager of information technology network engineering at Circa. “Whether it’s 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.”
Circa’s new network also supports digital experiences in the resort’s Garage Mahal transportation hub. The facility includes purpose-built solutions for hosting ride-sharing providers and will eventually serve as the downtown terminal for the Boring Company's Vegas Loop project seeking to outfit Las Vegas with high-speed transportation tunnels.
“With 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,” Palma said.
Moving forward, Circa will continue evaluating Aruba solutions that include AIOps, data-driven analytics and other innovations.