Intelligent CIO Middle East Issue 35 | Page 65

CASE STUDY T he Jumeirah Group, a part of Dubai Holding, is a hospitality industry leader with a world-class portfolio of luxury hotels and resorts around the world that includes the iconic seven-star Burj Al Arab in Dubai. One of the key business principles of the Jumeirah Group is to make customers its first priority and strive constantly to exceed their expectations. The group achieves this by leveraging technologies such as business intelligence, the Internet of Things and mobility, to offer each of the three million guests who visit its hotels annually an imaginative and exhilarating experience. “Nobody wants to wait in check-in queues for extended periods, especially after a long flight. Neither do diners appreciate long waits for the bill after a meal. Such unpleasant experiences don’t just entail financial impact, they negatively affect guest experiences and go against our policy of treating every customer like a VIP,” said Neil Menezes, Vice President Enterprise Architecture at Dubai Holding. “For this reason, the group’s properties offer guests premium tablet-based check-in, mobile check-in and check-out, iPad menus in restaurants and many new apps for unmatched guest experiences. Our clientele expects the very best and that’s what we deliver.” This utilisation of cutting-edge IT solutions to achieve clear business objectives is characterised by many advancements in guest services such as having the first hotel to offer Wi-Fi, computers and plasma TVs in every suite. IT also provides hotel staff with up-to-the- minute data on room occupancy, guest requests and other vital information, all of which makes it possible for them to better co-ordinate their efforts and execute their functions more efficiently. “To enable VIP treatment of all guests, we strive to introduce constant innovation, while also serving the requirements of the entire Jumeirah Group. This makes service availability of the utmost importance to our IT team. Cutting down management overheads and winning back time is what drove our interest in working with Veeam,” said Menezes. The group has been steadily expanding its hotel portfolio and is on track to operate 42 properties by 2018. “To support and sustain our expansion, we must have a robust and agile IT infrastructure in place so that the Jumeirah Group continues to deliver exceptional customer services with no downtime, and the high performance that our guests have come to expect,” he said. Menezes and his team selected Veeam Availability Suite for its performance, complete automation and orchestration CUTTING DOWN MANAGEMENT OVERHEADS AND WINNING BACK TIME IS WHAT DROVE OUR INTEREST. and inherent support for virtualisation. The improvements to performance were instantly obvious as with Veeam, backups now execute in half the time, even as the volume of data being backed up has nearly doubled. Veeam’s SureBackup feature guarantees these fully automated backups require no verification, saving the IT team precious time. Having experienced a 45% increase in data volume over the last two years, this performance improvement has been critical in ensuring all essential data is protected. www.intelligentcio.com INTELLIGENTCIO 65