Case Studies

IHG Hotels & Resorts is a global hospitality company, with a purpose to provide True Hospitality for Good. With a family of 18 hotel brands and IHG One Rewards, one of the world's largest hotel loyalty programs, IHG has over 6,000 open hotels in over 100 countries, and more than 1,800 in the development pipeline. Visibility Across Multiple Clouds, Regions, and Availability Zones For purpose-built digital services, IHG Hotels & Resorts is redefining the guest experience through innovation and next-generation technology. Underpinning their digital transformation strategy was a complex, global multicloud architecture that couldn't be supported by cloud native constructs alone. To address this challenge, IHG turned to Aviatrix to help create a scalable, repeatable architecture that was independent of the underlying cloud service provider. With existing physical data centers and a significant AWS presence across multiple regions, IHG knew they needed to rethink their IT architecture to overcome multicloud complexities and support global expansion. While IHG initially relied on native constructs within each cloud for networking and security, they quickly found they needed a common plane across their entire global, multicloud network. "When you start building all these clouds across multiple regions, multiple availability zones, and with different cloud providers or SaaS providers – you're moving data all over the place," said Eric Norman, Head of Infrastructure, Architecture, and Innovation at IHG. "And if you don't have a single pane of glass to see that entire network and be able to route accordingly, it's going to be a zoo." Automation Enabling Business Critical Applications In a hyper-customer-centric industry like hospitality, customer-facing applications are critical to the business. The availability of business-critical applications in the cloud requires powerful capability, consistent uptime, and the ability to troubleshoot in real-time when something goes wrong. Aviatrix provided embedded network telemetry to keep business-critical applications running. "Being able to deploy an application in multiple regions elevates the product's availability to our guests," said Norman. "The longer our products are up, the more revenue they can produce." Extending Multicloud Operations to the Edge To meet its needs at the edge, IHG used Equinix to introduce a performance hub architecture that sits in every region, in every public cloud, and with every partner. Through Equinix's recent partnership with Aviatrix, IHG built a mesh network across its global regions to quickly deploy new landing zones and public clouds with their networking construct. The Aviatrix and Equinix collaboration extends the cloud operational model that Aviatrix delivers out through Equinix's global fabric – granting IHG visibility and control across the globe. The Power of Partnership From a business perspective, IHG significantly improved operational productivity and simplified its multicloud environment by deploying Aviatrix multicloud networking and security solutions. IHG continues to leverage the Aviatrix controller to create common control and data planes across its multicloud network. "You could do a marathon by yourself – but if you want to improve and become a great runner, you need a coach, you need a nutritionist, you need people running alongside you to make you go faster and farther," said Norman. "Having a partner like Aviatrix helps the team to be successful." IHG Hotels & Resorts Global Expansion Now Supported with a Simplified Multicloud Networking Solution CHALLENGE IHG required a solution that would allow them to: • Leverage public clouds – Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google Cloud Platform (GCP) – with a common control plane across their multiple clouds and regions • Operate a global environment with diverse regional regulatory and privacy requirements • Reduce cloud complexities and increase operational productivity • Achieve key tenants for global operations – simplicity, automation, visibility, and control SOLUTION IHG implemented Aviatrix software for VPC–to–VPC (Virtual Private Cloud) transit network connectivity across AWS and GCP to create the enterprise cloud-networking backbone as a software overlay without hair pinning through their on-premises data center. This architecture includes: • Aviatrix AirSpace intra-cloud network data plane for an encrypted multi-region connectivity • Aviatrix Firewall Network for Check Point CloudGuard firewall service insertion • Aviatrix AirSpace controller for automated route propagation • Aviatrix CoPilot to deliver global visibility and monitoring RESULTS • Scalable, end-to-end encrypted connectivity from hotel properties to AWS and GCP • Simplified Day-Two cloud network operational visibility and troubleshooting • On-demand networking to reduce new property onboarding from days to minutes • Highest performance and the best scale-out architecture for Check Point CloudGuard firewalls INDUSTRY: Hospitality CASE STUDY For more information, visit aviatrix.com © Aviatrix, 2022.

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