Bal Harbour Shops is the most exclusive high-end shopping center in America showcasing an exceptional collection of chic boutiques and restaurants. They are looking to expand their brand recognition and luxury retail shopping center at their main location with plans to open up an additional high-end galleria in downtown Miami.
Due to continued network problems, Bal Harbour Shops was experiencing increased difficulty with video conferencing, Voice-over-IP telephony, and other communications and collaboration tools. Their legacy network equipment, including the underlying cabling infrastructure, was not adequate to support a converged data, voice, and video environment. Bal Harbour lacked the bandwidth and had numerous configuration problems with servers, switches, routers, and firewalls. Wireless access was also an issue in the Executive offices as well as the common areas amongst the Shops. The infrastructure could no longer support and meet the needs of the day to day operations. The environment as a whole was outdated and could not scale for growth: lacking the necessary bandwidth and infrastructure required to measure, track, and report for future growth and expansion. Simple tasks were not completed in a timely manner due to the bottlenecks and latency on the network. Their IT team lacked the time, training, and tools to properly support and upgrade the network.
To better position Bal Harbour Shops to be able to meet the needs of its tenants and exclusive clientele, they reached out to R2 Unified Technologies. R2UT was able to help them design a solution that would allow them to expand their footprint as well as accommodate additional distributed and remote staff. R2UT positioned Cisco’s solutions to meet their interconnectivity, communication, and visibility needs. R2’s Cisco technical consultants overhauled the entire switching infrastructure from the core all the way through the access layer and provided a new router as well to facilitate the bandwidth upgrade and better serve the internet and voice capabilities. In addition, R2UT virtualized the environment with several new Cisco rack servers and centralized storage. By installing a telepresence solution with video endpoints, this allowed for Bal Harbour Shops to receive on-demand and scheduled video conferencing. Lastly, wireless access points managed by a LAN controller were installed to better serve the wireless throughout the Shops and Offices.
Services Manager, R2 Unified Technologies
Bal Harbour Shops’ network as a whole was now more stable, faster, and more reliable than ever. They now have the ability to grow and scale to meet their evolving business needs and demands. Connectivity is now available from the Executive Offices down through the Shops including all parking booths. All access points are interconnected and communicating at the level needed to run the Shops efficiently and effectively.
By providing Wi-Fi access throughout Bal Harbour Shops, R2 Unified Technologies was able to both appease the internet demands of their tenants and seamlessly connect remote workers with business resources. Customers, clients, and employees now had always-on secure access to networked business services. Wireless configuration, management, and troubleshooting were centrally managed for exceptional visibility and control. In addition, IT operations were able to properly secure, maintain, and manage the network from a centralized location. With the help of R2, Bal Harbour Shops was able to help the IT department at Bal Harbour Shops ensure all constituents of the mall had access to these services while at the same time minimizing the risk of viruses or attacks by providing secure internet access. Bal Harbour Shops now has the technology in-house to measure and report on which stores yield the most profit and can get visibility that help with their business and marketing plans for future growth and expansion.
“When it came down to it, R2 had the skills, talent, and the people in place to support all of our [services and collaboration end points] needs.”
HR and Project Administration Manager, Bal Harbour Shops
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