Skycity upgrades gaming network infrastructure

Skycity, an operator of five casinos and four hotels in Australia and New Zealand, has upgraded its gaming network infrastructure to meet customer demand for wireless connectivity and improve the experience on games machines.

“We were moving to high-speed networking across our gaming floors, which we didn’t have before, and so this was a whole new purchase for new capability,” Skycity CIO Mike Clarke told CIO Australia.

“It’s about enhancing the [customers] experience. You can still use a kiosk, you can still talk to a person, but you can do many of those things you that would have done before now on a gaming machine – from ordering drinks to looking at your points balance… It just makes it another more personal experience for customers.”

The gaming infrastructure upgrade consists of 400 HP networking switches, including the HP 5400 zl Switch Series, HP 3500 yl Switch Series and HP 2610 Switch Series. According to Skycity, this improves the scalability and processing capability to meet peaks in demand. These switches are attached to HP BladeSystem and ProLiant servers.

Clarke said wireless connectivity is increasingly what customers are demanding and is part of what drives a better experience.

“We are moving into a whole new world of the way customers are communicating and want to be communicated with and this is just a part of that mix,” he said.

“I think what’s going on in the wireless world is that more and more demand is being placed, people are having a high expectation that good wireless will be available wherever they go and that is really what we are trying to respond to as a hotel and convention provider in each of those sites where we have those facilities.”