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.

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.”

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.

Using Truffle, the Software-Defined WAN (SD-WAN) devices capable of Broadband Bonding to aggregate 2 or more broadband lines provided Chaminade Resort and Spa with the following benefits:

Boost in WAN Performance:

Truffle appliances were used to bond three WAN circuits. Chaminade increased capacity 300%. The overall WAN metrics improved both for mission-critical applications as well as best-effort traffic.

Boost in WAN Reliability:

Truffle provided self-healing WAN and dynamic fail-over capabilities for Chaminade’s network. As a result, on-going Internet sessions are now shielded from any WAN outages or performance fluctuations, as long as at least one of the WAN connections stay up.

Reduced WAN Cost:

Compared to a single MPLS-based WAN network, the cost savings achieved by Chaminade were very significant, reaching up to 70% cost savings.

Reduced Emergency Calls & Related Cost:

Implementing Truffle significantly reduced emergency calls for IT problem tickets as most WAN-related outages and emergencies are now shielded from the users and can be addressed after hours in scheduled maintenance windows.

At a prestigious resort such as Chaminade, guests and business people alike expect all their amenities to be there when they need them. One of the most important nowadays is reliable high speed Internet for meetings, checking email and contacting family. To be up to par with such high standards, a spotty Internet connection simply isn’t acceptable which is why the Truffle was implemented. Amundson makes it clear that both the setup and continuing reliability of the product were both hugely positive aspects, making it the clear choice in internet bonding.