Southern Sun Hotels
A national WiFi management migration across Southern Sun properties, consolidating access points onto new bandwidth management services and centralised controllers.
Property
Southern Sun hotels across South Africa
Rooms
50+ sites and 1500+ Ruckus access points
Category
Hospitality
Project Scope
Southern Sun needed VOD Group to take over WiFi management across many of its properties. The work included migrating each site to a new bandwidth management service and consolidating access points from the existing provider to central controllers, with the challenge of completing 50+ sites across South Africa in less than five months.
The Requirements
1
Access Point Migration
Move hotel WiFi access points from the current provider to centralised controllers.
2
Bandwidth Management
Introduce a new guest-facing bandwidth management service across the estate.
3
Fast Site Cutovers
Plan each hotel migration to reduce the window to one or two days where possible.
4
Staff Enablement
Train staff on the new platform and its improved guest service functionality.
The Solution
1
Hoist Fusion Platform
A Dell server at each site supported monitoring and management of HSIA services and client devices.
2
Controller Consolidation
Access points were consolidated onto central virtual controllers hosted across three data centres.
3
Guest Landing Pages
Landing pages were designed around familiar room-based authentication and loyalty-focused guest access.
4
Post-Migration Inspection
Network inspections confirmed active monitoring for quality, visibility and support readiness.
The Result
All sites were migrated successfully in under five months, with individual site migrations completed within one to two days. The new platform improved WiFi performance, reduced support calls, simplified guest onboarding and gave properties active monitoring data for bandwidth utilisation, device connections and service trends.
Summary
1
Requirements
Migration and consolidation of hotel WiFi access points to central virtual controllers.
2
Solutions
Hoist Fusion Dell servers, bandwidth management, landing pages and staff training.
3
Results
50+ sites migrated in under five months, with better onboarding and active monitoring.
4
Industry
Hospitality