CUSTOMER SUCCESS

Emirates Palace Securing One of the World’s Most Luxurious Hotels

Emirates Palace is an iconic landmark on the Abu Dhabi skyline. This hotel prides itself on having one of the widest-reaching and deepest IT security strate-gies of any hotel in the Middle East. Symantec™ is making a major contribution to this. An integrated portfolio of server/client management, endpoint security, and data protection solutions are helping to protect endpoints and servers from malware, prevent security outbreaks, and reduce the cost of managing client systems. By automating many of the tasks associated with managing and troubleshooting client systems, the hotel’s technicians no longer need to travel the length and breadth of the hotel’s 100 hectares―thereby, doubling the volume of tickets each technician can manage in one shift.

Among the most impressive hotels and conference venues ever built

With a desired aim to be considered the best hotel in the world, Emirates Palace in the capital of the United Arab Emirates―Abu Dhabi―is one of the most impressive hotels and conference venues ever built. The hotel is located on 1.3 km of private white sandy beach and surrounded by 85 hectares of landscaped gardens. The hotel boasts 394 rooms and suites.

Hakam Sourani is the hotel’s director of information technology (IT) and audio visual (AV) ser-vices, and it is his responsibility to support the array of guest services which reach right across the 100 hectares of space. These include the technical facilities in the 40 meeting and confer-ence rooms, a ballroom with capacity for 2,400 guests in a theater style, the 1,100 seat audito-rium, and the 619 plasma and LCD screens in guest rooms and meeting rooms. “Emirates Palace often hosts heads of state and royal dignitaries, so, as you can imagine, the underlying technol-ogy infrastructure has to be reliable, quick, and continually available―not only for these VIPs, but for all of our guests,” explains Sourani.

A Microsoft Windows, Novell NetWare, and UNIX environment, residing on up to 38 HP and Dell servers―together with 350 endpoints―support guest services. When the hotel first opened, Veritas NetBackup™ software from Symantec was introduced to provide high performance backup and recovery. It offers one unified platform through which Sourani and his team can

ORGANIZATION PROFILE

Website: www.emiratespalace.com

Industry: Hospitality

Founded: 2004

SYMANTEC SOLUTION Server and Client Management

Endpoint Security

Data Protection

Why Symantec?

· Integrated portfolio of security and data protection solutions

· Local service and support in Abu Dhabi

· Symantec’s reputation in the security software market

CUSTOMER SUCCESS EMIRATES PALACE

effectively manage, protect, and recover data across the hotel’s disk and tape stor-age tiers, the data center, and operating systems. Service Level Agreement (SLA) commitments are met using storage lifecycle policies to create storage tiers and auto-matically move backup data through its lifecycle, while the administration console provides a centralized location for NetBackup setup and administration.

Complete visibility into the hotel’s client systems

More recently, Emirates Palace also intro-duced Altiris™ Client Management Suite to automate many of the time-consuming and redundant tasks associated with managing and troubleshooting the client systems. Based on international standards, the Symantec solution provides complete visi-bility into the hotel’s client systems, allow-ing the team to view what is deployed, where it’s located, and what state it’s in.

For Sourani, the main advantages of Altiris lies in the deployment of the Windows plat-form with complete touch-free imaging and provisioning. “You can easily get addicted to Altiris,” he says. “When you bear in mind our site reaches over 1.3 kilometers from one end to another, it is so much easier to control client systems remotely or use real-time systems diagnostics to fix problems without disrupting end users or impacting guests themselves. With Altiris, Emirates Palace is able to operate faster, with less manpower.”

Sourani estimates that before using Altiris, a hotel technician was completing an aver-age of four requests/trouble tickets per hour in an eight hour shift, equivalent to 32 jobs per day. This was based on the need to physically transit across the hotel site to fix and repair the issue with the system. Using Altiris, Sourani estimates that the same technician is now able to complete an aver-age of eight requests/trouble tickets per hour in an eight hour shift―double the number before. “Altiris reduces the time and maintenance costs associated with im-

aging and cloning PCs by deploying stan-dard, corporate-approved, hardware-inde-pendent images. We can also execute operating system patches to the client sys-tems that need them during appropriate maintenance windows and check the instal-lation status at any time. All of this is completed from one central location.”

SOLUTION AT A GLANCE

Business Drivers

• Simplify client and server management

• Reduce the cost of supporting technology

• Minimize volume of help desk enquiries

Symantec Products

• Altiris™ Client Management Suite

• Symantec™ Endpoint Protection 11.0

• Veritas NetBackup™ 6.5

Technology Environment

• End users: 300

• Operating Systems: Microsoft Windows XP

• Applications: Microsoft Exchange 2007, and others

Symantec Partner• Active Solutions

BUSINESS VALUE AND

TECHNICAL BENEFITS

Security

• Protected 350 endpoints and 38 servers from malware, such as viruses and spyware

• Prevented security outbreaks

Cost Savings

• Reduced the cost of managing client systems

Ease of Use

• Required only a single agent managed by a single management console

• Provided complete visibility into the hotel’s client systems

Efficiency

• Doubled the volume of tickets technicians could manage in one shift

• Automated many of tasks associated with managing and troubleshooting client sys-tems

“You can easily get addicted to Altiris.

It is so much easier to control client

systems remotely or use real-time

systems diagnostics to fix problems

without disrupting end users or

impacting on guests themselves.”Hakam SouraniDirector of IT and AV

Emirates Palace

CUSTOMER SUCCESS

Threat protection from a single management console

The third part of the equation is Symantec™ Endpoint Protection 11.0. Complementing the NetBackup and Altiris implementations, Symantec Endpoint Protection is being used to defend laptops, desktops, and servers against viruses and spyware. Like the other two Symantec technologies, this advanced threat protection solution is operated from a single management console. “Symantec Endpoint Protection proactively monitors our network and offers intelligent insight into the threats we face here in Abu Dhabi. The single agent and unified console also play a major role in increasing protection and reducing the hotel’s total cost of owner-ship,” says Sourani.

Emirates Palace prides itself on having one of the most modern and most effective IT security policies of any hotel in the Middle East. By choosing the integrated portfolio of Symantec solutions, Emirates Palace is also benefiting from automation, standard-ization, and consolidation.

Copyright © 2009 Symantec Corporation. All rights reserved. Symantec, the Symantec lLogo, Veritas, NetBackup, and Altiris are trademarks or registered trademarks of Symantec Corporation or its affiliates in the U.S. and other countries. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners. All product information is subject to change without notice. Part Number: 20030599

“Altiris reduces the time and

maintenance costs associated with

imaging and cloning PCs by deploying

standard, corporate-approved,

hardware-independent images.”Hakam SouraniDirector of IT and AV

Emirates Palace