Las Vegas entertainment hub delivers 1.25 million square feet of transcendent experiences using Aruba ESP-based network

As the first downtown Las Vegas lodging and entertainment venue to open in 40 years, Circa Resort & Casino set out to provide the latest in technology enabled experiences at its 1.25 million-square-foot, 35-story, 777-room sports-themed property.

“Digital technologies were fundamental to realizing our vision for creating an energetic and transcendent atmosphere,” explains Paul Ballard, CIO at Circa. “From multicasting on massive video displays throughout the property to providing guests with modern in-room amenities, we needed the wired and wireless networking infrastructure essential for supporting our unique 24/7 operation.”

Holistic Solution Supplies Full Networking Stack

With a mission to offer the best of yesterday, the excitement of today, and the possibilities of tomorrow, Circa designed singular relaxation and gaming spaces, such as its Stadium Swim pool deck, with amphitheater-style lounging terraces facing a 143-foot video display, a three-story Sportsbook, featuring a 78 million pixel video display divided into 42 screens, and a connected transportation hub called the Garage Mahal.

To ensure it could provide the bandwidth, performance, reliability, and security necessary for delivering exceptional video, gaming and in-room offerings, Circa worked with its with trusted integration partner, Evotek, to evaluate various networking solutions by Cisco, Juniper and Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, as well as a gigabyte passive optical network (GPON) by Corning for hotel room connectivity.

Ultimately, Circa elected to standardize on Aruba’s end-to-end solution. “Aruba supplied the full stack of AI-enabled wired and wireless networking innovations,” Ballard says. “Also, deploying Aruba Wi-Fi to guest rooms addressed user expectations while saving us nearly a half million dollars versus GPON.”

Aruba ESP-based Network Powers Experiences On-site and Off

For its Aruba ESP-based network, Circa’s wireless deployment includes Aruba’s 500 Series Wi-Fi 6 access points (APs) and outdoor APs in common areas along with hospitality APs for in-room connectivity. Wired solutions included CX Switch Series at the core, 5400R Switch Series for aggregation and 2930 Switch Series for edge access.

Circa also deployed the CX 6300 Switch Series for extending its Sportsbook to satellite locations in Nevada and Colorado. “We plan to continue expanding our gaming presence to other jurisdictions using our Aruba infrastructure,” says Ballard.

Unified management streamlines administration and improves troubleshooting

On the management side, Circa is streamlining wired and wireless network administration by implementing AirWave for network management along with ClearPass for network access control (NAC) and policy management.

“Our advanced infrastructure ensures our lean IT staff the can efficiently and effectively manage the network and support modern hospitality applications,” says John Palma, Manager of Information Technology Network Engineering at Circa.

In addition, Circa adopted User Experience Insight (UXI) to gain continuous real-time performance insights from a user and device perspective. “Enabling us to proactively remediate experience issues solves a historical frustration for hospitality IT departments like ours, as users frequently report trouble long after the fact,” Palma says.

Partnership enables on-time grand opening during pandemic

During deployment, Circa not only faced the typical challenges with constructing a new facility, but also contended with completing the resort during COVID-19 distancing and isolation restrictions. Assistance from Evotek and Aruba were both key to staying on track.

“Although our wired and wireless implementation went smoothly, we experienced a few third party integration hurdles, such as with our Crestron DM NVX AV-Over-IP,” says Palma.

“Aruba immediately provided us with direct contact to the appropriate developers, who sorted out the situation expeditiously,” he adds.

IT and Business Benefits Quickly Add Up

With its holistic network in place, Circa is realizing considerable IT and business returns.

“In IT, we’re very pleased with our CX Switching portfolio,” says Palma. “Coming from a Cisco background, the polished CX interface and the capabilities within the AOS-CX operating system make it much easier to deploy and manage services on thousands of switch ports.”

Also, the combination of CX switches and ClearPass enables Circa to utilize Aruba’s Dynamic Segmentation feature for automating port assignments and segmenting traffic on-the-fly, based roles and context. “The resource savings is significant, compared to the traditional method of pre-configuring switch ports,” Palma says.

Further, Aruba Wi-Fi’s zero-touch provisioning adds efficiencies to the mix. “Zero-touch works in concert with ClearPass and the downloadable user role feature in AOS-CX to reduce our network configuration tasks as much as 75 percent,” says Palma.

Capturing competitive advantage

From a business perspective, Circa gains the agility to take advantage of competitive opportunities while keeping daily operations humming.

“Just one example was quickly reconfiguring a space to accommodate strong guest interest in the first post-COVID March Madness NCAA Tournament,” says Ballard.

“It was a significant revenue opportunity that only required days for setting up the needed wired and wireless connectivity,” he adds. “With other solutions we’ve experienced, it would’ve taken months.”

Robotic bartenders, connected security and other IoT-enabled advances

Day-to-day, Circa’s networking infrastructure also supports the applications that automate operations and ensure exceptional guest experiences. This includes the resort’s Oracle Hospitality OPERA 5 Property Management system (PMS), with Wi-Fi integration for digital check-in and digital room keys as well as in-room amenities, such as connected lighting and IP TVs, along with various solutions for mobilizing guest room attendants and facilities engineering staff.

“Even our building maintenance system is connected,” Ballard says. “We use it for everything from controlling the Stadium Swim’s water filtration to leveraging IoT-enabled robotic bartenders for efficiently mixing drinks behind the scenes.”

Other IoT solutions are equally critical. They range from TallyFi clicker counters, for real-time attendance analytics and capacity management, to physical security systems.

“For enhanced safety, we’ve paired our OTIS Compass 360 elevator system with SALTO Systems electronic access locks,” says Ballard. “By integrating information drawn from our PMS, we not only restrict elevators to employees and guests, but also ensure individuals can only exit on appropriate floors.”

Garage Mahal: High-tech transportation hub

It’s a similar story in the Garage Mahal, where creating a clean, safe and artistic transportation environment draws upon the network for multiple services.

“In addition to supplying connectivity for traditional options, ride-sharing operators use our Wi-Fi to communicate with clients” Ballard says. “Plus, we’ve deployed the SKIDATA management system to turn our garage into a revenue-generating business.”

Circa’s technology capabilities helped the resort win the opportunity to host the downtown terminal for the Boring Company's Vegas Loop project in the Garage Mahal. “The project will interconnect various Las Vegas locations via a high-speed transportation tunnels,” says Ballard.

Ongoing Aruba ESP Innovation Differentiates It from the Rest

Moving forward, Circa intends to extend it use of the Aruba Edge Services Platfrom (ESP) to gain further operational and IT benefits.

This includes evaluating Aruba Central, a powerful cloud networking solution with AI-powered insights, workflow automation, and robust security. With Central, Circa can optimize its wired and wireless networks from a single dashboard as well as benefit from advanced AIOps for proactive network management and exceptional hospitality application support.

No matter which new solutions it deploys, Circa expects its Aruba partnership will continue playing a prominent role.

“Our advanced and flexible Aruba network gives us the ability to layer on applications and solutions that differentiate us from all of the other properties in the market,” Ballard says. “That’s key to our profitability and our overall success.”