A nationwide chain of fast-causal restaurants approached Cloud 9 in the midst of executing a growth strategy that involved opening numerous additional locations on or near college campuses nationwide. As they looked to carry out their plan, they understood that providing reliable, free WiFi in their restaurants was an important way to attract customers.

Using their existing arrangement, adding new branches to the network or increasing bandwidth at a location was going to be costly and time consuming.  With locations spread across the entire United States, there would simply be too many carriers, contracts and individual projects to efficiently manage. The customer needed an affordable solution for internet connectivity that could deliver WiFi service at hundreds of locations across the country. Additionally, the customer was looking for outside expertise to help them manage each of these network components as a whole. As their current Internet contracts came due at individual locations, the customer needed a partner with the ability to cover all their locations and effectively project manage the volume. With locations throughout the continental U.S., there wasn’t a single provider that could meet their needs in each region.

The client reached out to Cloud 9 Advisers to help develop a winning solution and then to identify, research, evaluate, and compare suitable vendors that could service all 274 client locations. 

Cloud 9 was able to introduce the client to several possible candidate vendors that could provide a customized solution for each location that took into support, service availability, and overall value. 

The clients hadn’t even considered seeking out a vendor that could not only deliver internet to each location but also manage each locations WiFi. The winning provider ultimately provided a solution that resulted in a combination of broadband cable and broadband fiber with SDWAN and a DSL backup connection at each site. Since the provider also had other managed services offerings the client chose to include Managed WiFi and security as well. The vendors team and Cloud 9 engineering used their overall knowledge of the telecom landscape to provide a specific location-by-location approach.

As the project continued, inevitable challenges arose that threatened to significantly delay service deployment.  While these situations are typical and, to an extent, expected in wide-scale deployments, Cloud 9 and the winning telecom and managed services provider was uniquely suited to shift gears to avoid significant delays.  For example, several locations required a build. With dedicated vendor resources keeping a close eye on the project, the vendors project management and implementation teams could quickly move to another underlying provider. Being able to see the different options across vendors at any given location and understand the implications of one over another helped the customer avoid costly builds and unnecessary delays.

The customer has, to-date, turned up Internet access at over 200 of its 274 locations. For this customer, partnering with Cloud 9 to find the right vendor has meant not being tied to a single carrier’s network assets and not having to manage multiple suppliers. Instead, they receive the most efficient and cost-effective solution on a case-by-case basis. At the same time, they still benefit from a single provider who can assist them in deploying, managing, and supporting every location and the entire network. Add to that a team of dedicated resources to design, deliver and support the service, the experience has exceeded the customer’s expectations – delivering simplicity, flexibility and value.

In the end, the customer increased their bandwidth at each of their restaurant locations while delivering more value to their customers via a better WiFi experience, all while reducing their expected costs, IT resources, and having a single call for support. Through this experience, the customer has gained tremendous confidence in Cloud 9 Advisers and the winning vendor.