Case Study: XO Helps Golds Gym Flex Its Network Muscle

Established in Venice, Calif., in 1965, Gold’s Gym is the largest co-ed gym chain in the world with more than 680 locations in 43 states and 30 countries. Gold’s Gym offers the latest equipment and services, including group exercise, personal training, cardiovascular equipment, spinning, Pilates and yoga, while maintaining its core weight lifting tradition. With nearly 3 million members worldwide, Gold’s Gym continues to change lives by helping people achieve their individual potential.

The Challenge

The challenge was to implement a nationwide wide area network connecting 57 Gold’s Gym corporate locations across the United States, including major offices in Venice, Calif., and Falls Church, Va., and its data center and headquarters in Dallas, Texas. The new network had to have the ability to support corporate applications, company databases, e-mail, point of sale transactions and the company’s migration to VoIP.

“With locations nationwide and around the world, our network is the lifeblood of our company’s operations,” said Bill Wade, chief information officer for Gold’s Gym. “To meet our needs, we needed a provider that could assist us with the rapid deployment of an MPLS network, deliver increased performance and reliability, and deploy people with the technical skills to implement an entire solution. XO fit the bill perfectly.”

The Solution

The solution was XO Communications MPLS IP VPN, connecting all of Gold’s Gym’s locations over a secure, private IP network with Class of Service capabilities and high-speed Ethernet access to support optimal network performance.

The Results

The XO solution serves as a foundation for Gold’s Gym’s evolution to a converged IP multi-service network, enabling deployment of VoIP and other converged services in the future. The design of the XO solution also gives Gold’s Gym the flexibility to utilize Virtual Routing and Forwarding, allowing Gold’s Gym to create numerous virtual routers and establish separate and distinct private networks over the XO network. In addition, XO MPLS IP VPN allows Gold’s Gym to cost-effectively manage the priority of distinct traffic types across its network without extra charges for traffic assigned to each class of service.

XO MPLS IP-VPN offers businesses and large enterprises a secure, intelligent and managed network to connect offices, customers and partners and converge a wide range of voice, video and data applications over a single IP network infrastructure. XO MPLS IP VPN provides a wide range of access options to connect locations and flexible Classes of Services to prioritize Internet, intranet, extranet, voice, video and mission-critical business applications – all over a single, high-performance application-aware IP network.