Academy Mortgage (“Academy”) is one of the nation’s largest and most respected independent mortgage lenders. With over 2,500 employees, the firm is headquartered in Salt Lake City and has 260 branch offices across the country.
Academy Mortgage (“Academy”) is one of the nation’s largest and most respected independent mortgage lenders. With over 2,500 employees, the firm is headquartered in Salt Lake City and has 260 branch offices across the country.
“Wi-Fi is a core component of our business operations,” said Gordon Riese, Network Engineer at Academy Mortgage. “Our employees use laptops and mobile devices to access online loan systems, email, and other key applications, and we require a robust and secure guest Wi-Fi network for clients to use when they come onsite to visit brokers.”
Previously, Academy used a combination of Cisco WLAN controllers and Cisco Meraki for Wi-Fi in their campus and branches. When some of that equipment approached the End of Life (EOL), they took a fresh look at the wireless industry to see if there were new, more modern solutions that could improve their employee and client Wi-Fi experience while simplifying IT operations.
“We really wanted a Wi-Fi platform that could lower our ongoing operations and troubleshooting costs. Mists unique usage of Artificial Intelligence and microservices in the cloud immediately caught our eye.”
— Gordon Riese, Network Engineer, Academy Mortgage
With the assistance of Mist’s partner Compunet, Academy ultimately decided to make a switch to the Mist Learning WLAN, based on the following key differentiators:
• Ease of deployment: Mist simplifies new site creation using automation and API-driven scripts
• Fast troubleshooting: Mist uses AI and Machine Learning to rapidly identify the root cause of issues across the wireless, wired, and device domains. Mist detects events and sends alerts to the IT team, providing proactive identification of issues prior to user awareness.
• Analytics: Mist provides incomparable insight into network, site, and device behavior including visibility into the Wi-Fi experience via customizable service levels
• Agility: With the Mist cloud, new features are rolled out weekly with no network downtime. In addition, Mist has a fresh approach to IT, where everything is programmable through open APIs. This creates the potential for future integration with key platforms, such as Academy’s firewalls.
“We’ve been so happy with operational cost savings and improved employee experience that we are seeing from Mist that we have decided to accelerate the rollout of the solution across our footprint. Kudos to the Mist engineering team for delivering a new take on Wi-Fi solution that makes the life of a network engineer that much easier.”
— Gordon Riese, Network Engineer, Academy Mortgage
