With 11 modern ships venturing everywhere from the Mediterranean to Tahiti, AIDA Cruises is a premier player in Germany’s tourism industry.

But keeping those ships fully modern demands great networking, mobility, and security. So, AIDA turned to Cisco Services for next-level networking and security.

“We needed a new network architecture on board,” said Gordon Poppe, CIO of AIDA Cruises, “to provide services and to build a resilient infrastructure. And that's where Cisco really was a great partner.”

The Rostock-based company is in the process of modernizing all 11 of its ships, with three already up to “network 2.0” standards. That means ensuring seamless guest connectivity for everything from entertainment and streaming to food services and safety — while the crew remains fully connected on the bridge, in the engine room, or wherever they are needed. Along the way, AIDA — and Cisco — are establishing an industry standard for maritime technology.

As for building that seamless connectivity, the refreshed ships are the first of their kind to feature open roaming. That ensures that guests and staff are fully connected no matter where they are on the ship, without the annoyance (and potential safety issues) associated with re-entering credentials at different access points.

“The network is the foundation for all the services that we want to provide to the guests and the crew,” said Diogo Almeida, head of network infrastructure and connectivity for AIDA Cruises. “And open roaming is a key component in that environment. Now, our guests immediately connect to the network, while historically they lined up at the front desk with their phones trying to hook up to the Wi-Fi network. We wanted to make that step as seamless as possible.”

“Together with Cisco,” he added, “it has worked in a fantastic way.”

Comprehensive network overhauls in 14 days

Upgrading a ship, however, presents unique challenges.

For starters, all work needs to be done while the vessels are in dry dock for other scheduled upgrades, a window of opportunity that typically lasts 14 days. So, comprehensive network overhauls — including migrating from legacy architectures to VXLAN across entire ships — need careful coordination with teams and technology.

“In the past two years, we took a deep dive in new technologies,” explained Almeida. “We wanted to improve the experience of our guests and the resilience of our infrastructure. Cisco Services was the fundamental part to enable us to make this deployment. And in a very short time, we were able to exchange all the devices, bring up the new network design, and bring a better, more reliable network to our vessels. And we didn't lose one single minute of cruise time.”

Bhaskar Jayakrishnan, Cisco's senior vice president of engineering for customer experience, emphasized that the quick turnaround was achieved by the combination of Cisco's professional services experts and advanced technologies, ensuring quality and cutting-edge innovation.

“We wanted to make sure that we put together the best network for connectivity irrespective of where the ship was, whether it is on the dock, whether it is in the middle of the ocean,” he said. “We worked with AIDA and its satellite partners to install 20,000 Wi-Fi units.”

The results? On upgraded ships, tests confirmed “zero drops” across 107 Wi-fi access points, from the engine room to the 28th floor. That means both crew and passengers enjoy uninterrupted connections, whether ensuring engineering and safety efficiencies or sharing videos to TikTok.

Resilience on the high seas

When a ship is thousands of miles out to sea, network resilience is critical. And Cisco’s platform strategy — including fusing together networking, security, and observability — is building simplicity and resilience into every process.

“Resilience is the baseline of everything — everything,” Poppe stressed. “It needs to come by design, and that's why we need to have a really robust environment and a platform that we can build on. We historically had many different suppliers for all kinds of services, hardware as well as software. But with the platform that we're now establishing together with Cisco and the partners, we’ve taken a really good step.”

Of course, changes to networking or security can’t always wait for the dry dock. That’s why Cisco Services and AIDA developed, AIDAqube, a land-based digital twin that recreates a ship’s entire environment. That way, Aida can test any new updates or innovations in a risk-free environment.

“Upgrading and patching a network device, appliance, or software comes always with risk,” Almeida said. “But that risk is higher when you do it remotely. For that, we created AIDAqube with help from Cisco services. It’s a digital twin of the actual ship. We have the same data center, the same network devices, and the same software. And we use it to test any deployment.”

It’s all about creating the best and safest experience for guests and crew, no matter how far a ship’s destination.

“With the help of Cisco services,” Poppe said, “we greatly simplified our network design, allowing us to achieve more value more quickly. By increasing the resiliency of our network, we really elevated the experience for our guests to a world class level.”

And the teams won’t stop there. They are looking to incorporate expanded agentic AI support and predictive capabilities — to cope with potential security threats or network outages before they happen. This will include new Cisco offerings such as Cisco IQ, a new digital interface offering personalized and proactive support and infrastructure management; AI Pods, enabling faster AI deployments and predictive insights from edge computing; ThousandEyes, for network visibility and assurance; and smart switching, to streamline and automate security and switching fabric.

Whatever the technology, the partnership with continue to thrive on the human level.

As Jayakrishnan concluded, “working with the AIDA team was a fantastic experience from day one.”