Stella Hospitality Group is the third-largest branded hotel operator in Australia with approximately 130 Australian resorts and hotels and an equivalent number of properties overseas. It currently owns, leases, manages and markets a rapidly expanding range of tourism and accommodation businesses under the Peppers, Mantra, BreakFree and Saville brands.

The Challenge: Ensuring a Satisfying Web Experience for Customers

Aiming to become a leading stakeholder in the Australian leisure industry, Stella commenced a rapid acquisition program in 2007. It started with 30 properties and within 12 months grew to 130 hotels and resorts. The individual sites for the entire group continued to be managed on single Web servers and presented via a single Web portal.

Garry Rich, Group general manager for IT, explained, “In the early life of the company, we didn’t have very many properties in our portfolio. At that time, conventional Web infrastructure technologies were adequate for delivering services via our Web site and booking engine.”

As Stella added the Web sites of newly acquired properties to its portal, it started to encounter load issues. Especially when the organization undertook marketing activity that drove traffic to the sites, resulting in usage spikes, Web server infrastructure was stretched to capacity.

Rich said, “Online user experience is very important as it affects the company’s overall brand image. We could not afford to have poor performance on our Web sites when a potential customer was making an online reservation or browsing for a marketing deal we had been promoting through other channels. We needed a reliable Web infrastructure to support marketing efforts and other business objectives.”

Implementing Citrix NetScaler

Stella’s IT infrastructure consists of Dell servers, Cisco core switches and a Cisco firewall. Rich said, “Our infrastructure was relatively new and of good quality; however, we had no clustering or load-balancing infrastructure. So we decided to explore options for a robust load-balancing solution.”

Stella opted for Citrix® NetScaler®, Enterprise Edition after evaluating a number of solutions. Citrix NetScaler combined the features and functions of traditional datacentre point products — load balancing, caching, compression, SSL acceleration, attack defense, SSL VPN — into a single network appliance.

He added, “After evaluating the capabilities of Citrix NetScaler, we were sure it was the best match for our needs — not only for load balancing but also because of benefits down the track when we coupled it with other Citrix products.” Stella worked with Platinum Citrix® Solution Advisor Clariti to implement NetScaler.

Increased Reliability and Scalability of Group Web Sites

With NetScaler, Stella has been able to improve the reliability of its more than 300 Web sites and deliver an improved customer experience.

NetScaler provides advanced traffic management abilities that enable Stella to handle peak traffic periods without affecting application response times. “Previously, during server maintenance or peaks in Web site traffic, we experienced outages that adversely affected the user experience. But that doesn’t happen now that NetScaler is in place. With NetScaler, we are confident that customers and prospective customers can access our sites at any time and get the information they need at good speeds,” said Rich.

The TCP offloading capabilities of NetScaler have eliminated application response delays previously experienced by users while making online reservations by enabling efficient data compression and caching of static and dynamic content.

“We have seen an increase in the Web component of our business — more and more people are making reservations online and site traffic is on the rise. On certain sites, traffic has risen by 200 to 300 per cent. Travel agents are also increasingly using our online reservation application to reserve facilities for their customers. NetScaler has provided us with the scalability to cater to these increased demands without forcing us to make any additional investments in our Web infrastructure,” said Rich.

After NetScaler was deployed, the Web servers’ load dropped dramatically, while throughput experienced a strong increase — all without the cost of adding more servers. The reduced load on each server provided additional capacity, enabling Stella to scale its Web site operations as the business grew. So, the company was able to cost-effectively increase its Web presence without having a problem with server load.

“The reliability and scalability benefits of NetScaler have enabled us to support our growth and customer service objectives while ensuring a good online experience for our users,” Rich said.

Future Plans

Moving forward, Stella plans to begin using the security features of NetScaler. “Traditionally, we have been using NetScaler only for load balancing but recent upgrades to the device have meant that we can also use it as an Access Gateway server and that’s what we plan to do,” said Rich.

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