CLIENT SUCCESS STORY
Phoenix Art Museum
Campus-Wide Network Modernization
04
The Results
The transformation was immediate and measurable. The Phoenix Art Museum went from a fragile, opaque network that required specialized Cisco engineers to diagnose basic issues — to a modern, fully visible environment that their own team can manage in minutes.
Hours of Troubleshooting → Minutes
Issues that previously required senior Cisco engineers and hours of diagnostic work are now resolved by internal staff in minutes using the Meraki dashboard.
Stronger Security & Compliance
Full VLAN segmentation, advanced threat protection, and supported, patched hardware bring the Museum into compliance and dramatically reduce risk.
Full Network Visibility
A single pane of glass shows every switch, access point, connected client, and traffic pattern in real time. Elimination of unmanaged switches, network loops, and end-of-life hardware means the Museum now operates on infrastructure designed for stability and growth.
Best-in-Class Guest & Staff Wi-Fi
Wi-Fi 6 delivers high performance to staff and visitors alike, with traffic shaping ensuring a consistent experience without over-provisioning bandwidth.
Reduced Long-Term IT Costs
With a manageable, documented, and fully supported infrastructure, the Museum no longer needs to call in high-cost specialists for routine issues — freeing budget for mission-driven priorities.
01
The Challenge
When the Museum’s IT Director reached out to Blue Fox Group, the situation was urgent. The organization had been running on a Cisco network infrastructure that was well over 20 years old — hardware that had long passed end-of-life, was no longer under Cisco support, and had become increasingly difficult and costly to maintain. Every year without replacement was a growing risk.
1
End-of-Life Infrastructure
Aging Cisco switches and phone systems with no available support, no vendor patches, and hardware that could fail without a clear replacement path.
2
No Network Documentation
Years of staff turnover meant the Museum had no reliable network topology. Nobody could say with certainty where switches were located, what was connected to which ports, or how cabling ran between buildings.
3
Unmanaged ‘Rogue’ Switches
To solve immediate coverage gaps over the years, unmanaged switches had been quietly added throughout the campus. These created network loops, bottlenecks, and unpredictable performance that compounded the underlying instability.
4
Complex Multi-Building Campus
Four buildings required coordinated wireless coverage, VLAN segmentation, and a network that could serve both staff administration and public visitor access — securely and simultaneously.
5
Security & Compliance Gaps
With unsupported, unpatched hardware and no traffic segmentation, the Museum’s network posed significant security and compliance risk — a liability no nonprofit can afford.
02
The Blue Fox Group Approach
Blue Fox Group began with a thorough physical and logical discovery process — walking every building, tracing cables, identifying every connected device, and building a true picture of what existed. From there, we designed and deployed a unified Cisco Meraki network across all four buildings, purpose-built for simplicity, security, and long-term manageability.
Our work included:
01
Shadow AI is already in your environment.
across all four buildings — tracing cabling, locating hidden switches, and documenting the full environment from scratch
02
Removal of all unmanaged
and rogue switches creating network loops and instability New cabling and structured wiring where gaps existed to ensure complete, reliable connectivity
03
Full deployment of Cisco
Meraki switches, access points, and security appliances under one unified management dashboard
04
Wi-Fi 6 access points
deployed campus-wide for high-performance wireless coverage
05
New cabling and structured
wiring where gaps existed to ensure complete, reliable connectivity
06
VLAN configuration
to cleanly separate staff, operational, and visitor networks — protecting sensitive systems from guest access
The Client
Phoenix Art Museum
The Phoenix Art Museum is one of the most celebrated cultural institutions in the American Southwest, welcoming tens of thousands of visitors each year across a sprawling four-building campus. As a nonprofit organization, the Museum relies on technology to power everything from administrative operations to guest Wi-Fi experiences — making network reliability not just an IT concern, but a mission-critical priority.
Industry:
Nonprofit
Location:
Phoenix, AZ
Services:
Physical Infrastructure & Managed Networking
“What used to take hours to diagnose now takes minutes. We finally have full visibility into our network — we can see what’s happening, where, and why.”
— IT DIRECTOR, PHOENIX ART MUSEUM