Located near the Las Vegas Strip, the Palms Casino Resort features a casino, restaurants, hotel and residence in Nevada. It boasts 653 rooms and suites, a 95,000 square-foot casino, and a 2,500-seat theater. The casino, for instance, has over 1,300 slot machines, with new audio and video technology.  Games include video poker, poker reels and 100 percent payback poker.

The complex is situated on about 30 acres, and three towers make the property distinct. Virtually, the entire facility was upgraded in a recent multi-million dollar renovation. With that size and environment, IT becomes very important to ensure a pleasing, efficient, secure and professional guest experience.

“Gaming and hospitality is a 24 by 7 [days a week], 365 [days a year] industry, and availability and security has to always be there and always be working,” Larry Fretz, VP IT and CIO Palms Casino Resort, told TMC’s (News - Alert) Rich Tehrani during an interview at ITEXPO Las Vegas.

When considering the different types of technology, Fretz said, “Everything as a Service is used quite a bit and it’s really evolving over the last probably four, five years.” Fretz points out too that a lot of organizations are refreshing their technology over the next few years and they will look at something as a service or the cloud models.

Another important issue for Fretz at the Palms relates to security. “Gaming and casinos [are] highly regulated,” he said. Also, there are a lot of customers. That leads to a lot of information needing to be processed, as well. “Protecting that information, of course, is paramount and security and compliancy is pretty much the number one decision to move anything to the cloud or as a service,” he explained. “At the end of the day, you have to look beyond that. Because if you’re partnering with the right vendor and the right situation, then security is part of that suite and they should be able to do that. Otherwise, it’s not a right fit.”