Perisher optimises throughput for skiers

Perisher, the Southern Hemisphere’s largest ski resort, has deployed Blue Coat ProxySG appliances and ProxyClient software to improve the performance of its business applications, particularly its point-of-sale transaction systems, enabling the company to serve more customers more quickly.

Using Blue Coat WAN optimisation solutions, Perisher can boost customer service and enable more skiers to get on the ski lifts more swiftly.

“With Blue Coat we have seen a significant performance improvement,” said Wayne Grixti, Senior Network and Systems Administrator, Perisher Blue Pty Limited. “Before installing Blue Coat appliances, our employees would experience long customer ticketing transactions times or even experience situations where a transaction would time-out altogether and not be completed. Now we have fast and consistent system response times and can provide exceptional customer service at all times.”

Perisher is located in Australia’s Snowy Mountains, where broadband connectivity options are limited. While Perisher has deployed high-speed, fibre-optic network links between mountain sites, it is limited to 512 Kbps ADSL connections in villages such as Jindabyne, where Perisher operates The Station, a 1200-bed hotel. The low-bandwidth connection caused slow application responsiveness, particularly when issuing tickets to ski facilities with their RTP|ONE application. These performance problems limited the number of tickets that could be processed and sold at The Station and at nine independent ticketing agencies in the surrounding area during periods of peak demand.

By using Blue Coat ProxySG appliances at the links between Perisher and The Station and by installing Blue Coat ProxyClient software at the external ticketing agencies, applications ran considerably faster, making them much more responsive and increasing overall transaction throughput.

A key reason Perisher chose Blue Coat was because its ProxyClient software could be deployed at no additional cost to the nine external ticketing agencies. While Perisher initially acquired ProxySG appliances for WAN optimisation, the solution’s ability to also provide web security was another key advantage.

“In a number of situations, WAN optimisation technologies can provide dramatic application performance even over short distances,” said Marc Jolly, Director for Priority 1, Blue Coat’s reseller partner for Perisher. “Because we had insight right down to the application level in the Perisher network, we could understand how to optimise the most important business applications. Blue Coat appliances combine visibility with acceleration and security to give us a robust solution to solve customer challenges.”