Brocade to upgrade Ardent Leisure Group’s Network

Visitors to Australia's theme park, Dreamworld will soon be enjoying wireless Internet access that is every bit as good as the park's 50 rides and attractions, thanks to a major network upgrade programme being rolled out by its owner, the Ardent Leisure Group. In order to meet customer demand for connectivity across its properties and embrace new entertainment opportunities over time, the group turned to Brocade to provide a high-performance network based on the Brocade ICX family of switches.

Delivered by Brocade's local partner, ASI Solutions, the new network will enable Ardent to quickly and efficiently evolve alongside its ever-changing business environment.

Brocade helped design the Dreamworld network, taking extra effort to ensure that it was correct, while ASI Solutions was very helpful in getting the project done. The result is that all the performance bottlenecks have been eliminated and, thanks to manageability of the entire infrastructure, it takes five minutes to turn on a feature whereas it used to take all day to change switch configurations, said Steven van Rooyen, Ardent's Group Network Administrator.

Greig Guy, Country Manager for Australia and New Zealand, Brocade, said, The move from a disparate structure to a centrally managed network design will deliver true business and technology benefits for Ardent Leisure. In a sense, this strategic upgrade will let them punch above their weight from a networking perspective.

At Dreamworld, Ardent has deployed a Brocade ICX 6610 switch stack in its server room, acting as the site's network core. In addition, Ardent has extensively deployed Brocade ICX 6430 switches across the Dreamworld site to provide Gigabit Ethernet network access, with power over Ethernet (PoE) capabilities that support Wi-Fi access points and voice-over-IP (VoIP) phones.