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COMPANY OVERVIEW Chaminade is one of Santa Cruz’s finest 4 diamond resorts. It features a restaurant, spa, fitness center, pool, tennis courts and private hiking trails. The resort also sits atop a mountain and boasts beautiful views of Monterey Bay and the Santa Cruz mountains. With a recent $15 million dollar renovation, Chaminade is a luxurious destination for executive meetings and relaxing getaways alike. The resort is also the first business in Santa Cruz to receive a “Green Business Certification” for its environmental efforts. CHALLENGE Gunnar Amundson, the IT manager for Chaminade, decided that there needed to be an improvement in the network at the resort after struggling with wireless WAN issues for quite some time. He noted: “The main problem with the wireless WAN solution was a lack of redundant paths. When there was an equipment failure we had no internet service and had to wait for the repair to restore the service for our guests.” As it is essentially the industry standard to provide high speed internet to its visitors, Chaminade needed a cost effective solution to this problem. This began Amundson’s search for a solution that could provide the guarantee of high speed internet to the resort’s guests without fear of slow speeds or network downtime. This would be challenging, however, as Chaminade didn’t have many internet service options available because of its location. Amundson summarizes the problem when he says, “DSL isn’t an option due to proximity to the CO. Fiber is an option, but is too expensive for us to offer complimentary internet access.” Chaminade Resort CASE STUDY Luxurious four diamond resort ditches wireless WAN for faster and more consistent internet connection. IN BRIEF Industry Information Technology Challenge Replacing an aging wireless WAN connection. Solution Mushroom Networks Truffle. Benefits Redundancy of lines provides for high reliability. Bonding of multiple lines provides high bandwidth. SOLUTION Amundson and Chaminade Resort opted to implement a Mushroom Networks Truffle unit into their infrastructure to remedy the problems they were experiencing. The Truffle was utilized by bonding 3 business grade WAN circuits together in order to maximize bandwidth available as well as limit the down time guests experienced. When compared to the price of ordering a fiber line, the Truffle, hands down, provided for a much quicker return on investment, making it a much wiser investment.
