Tommy Bahama is a Seattle-based manufacturer of resort clothes, accessories, home décor, and more with over 130 stores and 15 restaurants worldwide. When deciding on a network upgrade, they chose Cisco Meraki access points, switches, and a security appliance to enable easy centralized management of the network at all of their locations.

Original Networking Challenges

• Required a solution featuring remote troubleshooting to easily manage branch locations
• Needed a reliable network and to support in-store wireless initiatives such as mobile PoS
• Needed extremely fast deployment to 100 stores nationwide to support upcoming promotion

Why Cisco Meraki

• Centralized management with visibility across multi-store network
• PCI compliant solution
• Bandwidth monitoring and traffic shaping capabilities
• Quick hardware delivery and fast deployment required for iPad PoS initiative
• Asset tracking and iPad profile management with Systems Manager

The Deployment

• MR access points in over 100 stores and restaurants across the country
• Layer 3 and 7 firewall rules deny peer-to-peer and web file sharing
• Promotional iPads access store WiFi via WPA2 authentication, with Layer 7 traffic shaping protecting bandwidth
• MS switches and MX security appliances support connectivity at select stores
• Systems Manager provides asset tracking and manages 150 iPad profiles

I watched the Meraki dashboard as people opened up the iPads. Out of 115 sites, only three iPads had problems and we were able to immediately cross-ship new ones. It was a pretty flawless execution.Stewart Hubbard, VP of IT

Results

• Cisco Meraki wireless network successfully up and running in all 100 U.S. stores, ready to support iPad sweepstakes promotion within a single month
• Restaurants provide customers with reliable guest WiFi and a customized splash page
• Single network engineer manages network from Seattle via web-based dashboard
• Dashboard and alerts provide immediate feedback on network health
• Minimal management required and 100% uptime since deployment