Since 1999, The Venetian Resort-Hotel- Casino in Las Vegas has relied on a ProCurve Networking by HP network to run its entire business, spanning casino, convention center, retail,multirestaurant and guest services operations. When the company expanded its presence in Las Vegas and built an entirely new mega-resort-casino in Macao, China, it reaffirmed ProCurve as its trusted networking provider. Today, all of the Venetian's operations around the world enjoy powerful, reliable and easy-to-manage ProCurve networks.

Las Vegas and Monte Carlo might be the gold standards for large-scale gaming destinations, but Macao - located on the southern tip of China - is gaining rapidly in prestige as well as popularity. In fact, Macao is often called "the Las Vegas of Asia" as well as "the Monte Carlo of the Orient."

When The Venetian Macao Resort Hotel, a 3,000-suite mega-resort mirroring its Las Vegas namesake, opened recently, its six-floor casino officially qualified as the world's biggest . It also opened with exceptionally high expectations at all levels of its facilities. Nothing about The Venetian Macao's operations could be left to chance.

Taking a cue from its Las Vegas counterpart, The Venetian Macao installed a ProCurve Networking by HP network to control all the resortcasino's operations, from guest check-in to gaming security cameras. At about the same time, The Venetian Resort- Hotel-Casino in Las Vegas completed a major expansion - called The Palazzo - that nearly doubled its hotel facilities.

Throughout all this growth and new development, the ProCurve network has provided a trustworthy constant: a reliable, high-performance and highvalue networking solution that has proven itself up to the task of supporting two of the world's most prestigious mega-resort-casinos.

"I literally run a city," explained Steve Vollmer, director of information technology at The Venetian Resort-Hotel- Casino. "The Venetian has gaming, inventory control, purchasing, a bank, its own police force, 1200 security cameras, hotel services, restaurants, retail, even a TV station. The network is the heart of these operations and must be reliable. ProCurve is the right solution for us. The technology performs, is easy to use and is incredibly reliable."

Since it opened its doors in 1999, the $1.5 billion Venetian Resort-Hotel-Casino in Las Vegas has relied on a highperformance ProCurve network that is reliable, secure, efficient and scalable, allowing The Venetian to adapt to everchanging business needs in the competitive gaming and hospitality industry. The ProCurve network has helped The Venetian Las Vegas provides staff with valuable time savings through simplified network management and use.

The Venetian Las Vegas relies on its ProCurve network to run its entire operations, including slot machines, high-speed Internet access to all guest rooms, and Voice-over-Internet Protocol (VoIP) capabilities throughout its hotel suites, casino, shops, restaurants and convention center.

The ProCurve network also delivers superb wireless support for The Venetian's growing number of mobile users - including staff at its innovative, portable "roll-a-desks" that can be moved to different locations to expedite large group check-in or check-out. In addition, the network supports various convergence applications, such as a sophisticated digital video camera surveillance system,music over IP and a paging system.

When the Venetian Las Vegas added the new 3,000-suite Palazzo tower adjacent to its existing hotel complex - for a total of 7,000+ hotel suites to accompany its 120,000-square-foot casino, extensive shops and nearly 20 world-class restaurants - the resort's ProCurve network expanded as well.

The scalability of ProCurve solutions makes them the optimal choice for the Venetian, allowing the resort-casino to leverage its investment into the future as it continues to expand. Providing a complete local area network (LAN) solution, from the ProCurve Switch 5400zl series and other switches to the ProCurve Manager Plus (PCM+) network management software, the ProCurve network offered the flexibility to add the Palazzo tower seamlessly from the perspective of both guests and staff.

"Our ProCurve solution is straightforward, easy to manage and requires minimal support," said Vollmer. "In our business, the ProCurve network provides the foundation for superior guest services. Increased network performance at slot machines and the front desk translates to increased revenues.We estimate the ProCurve solution helps us save 10 to 15 seconds during guest check-in and check-out,which translates to a savings of nearly 30 hours a day just in one department."

The Venetian Las Vegas is big, but The Venetian Macao is even bigger. The gargantuan complex,which cost more than US$2 billion to build, boasts 3,000 hotel suites along with extensive convention and exhibition space, retail space, leading restaurants, deluxe spa and a six-floor casino.

To run this massive operation, the Venetian Macao has installed more than 1,500 ProCurve switches, including the 5400zl, 3500yl, 5300xl, 2800 and 2600 series; PCM+ 2.2 network management software and the ProCurve Identity Driven Manager (IDM) 2.1 plug-in; and more than 1,000 ProCurve radio ports for wireless local area networking (WLAN).

The Venetian Macao is using its ProCurve network in all aspects of its gaming and hospitality functions. It expects a great deal from the ProCurve network, based in part on ProCurve's success at The Venetian Las Vegas resort. In particular, The Venetian Macao is looking to its ProCurve network to improve customer experiences; sustain maximum network uptime; support emerging convergence applications such as video surveillance, VoIP and multimedia; provide wireless coverage throughout the complex; simplify network management; and be scalable for future expansions in size and in types of applications.

The ProCurve Networking business unit of HP delivers wired and wireless enterprise networking products, services and solutions. The foundation for ProCurve's business model is the Adaptive Networks strategy in which networks are adaptive to users, applications and an organization's needs.

Further information on ProCurve networking solutions and products is available at www.procurve.com.