Partner Article

Aruba Networks Enables Venues to Customise the Mobile Experience for Every Customer

London – Nov. 4, 2014 – Aruba Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: ARUN) today announced the global launch of Aruba Mobile Engagement, an interactive and personalised mobile solution based on Wi-Fi and location services powered by Aruba Beacons.

Aruba Mobile Engagement enables organisations to deliver customised push notifications and precise onsite navigation to users’ mobile devices based on their opted-in, personal profile settings and position inside a venue.

The new platform enables venues’ marketing and IT departments to partner more effectively resulting in increased customer loyalty, satisfaction and revenue.

Using Aruba Mobile Engagement’s push notifications, customers can securely opt-in to receive notifications they care about using Aruba Meridian-powered apps or a mobile browser via Aruba ClearPass Guest Advertising. Participating customers’ in-venue positions are then determined using mobile apps that recognise Aruba Beacons’ Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) technology and the Wi-Fi infrastructure to securely engage mobile devices inside venues.

To eliminate privacy concerns, Aruba Mobile Engagement does not capture or retain customer information and requires multiple layers of acknowledgement from the mobile user before activation.

In addition, Aruba Mobile Engagement allows mobile-device users to position themselves by searching for Aruba Beacons versus competing approaches that use hardware in a venue to search for the user. Notifications will only “wake up” a mobile app after customers have completed a three-stage opt-in process, are next to a point of interest they care about, and input information to create their profile in the mobile app. If the customer no longer wishes to receive notifications they can simply opt out ending all communications between the customers’ mobile devices and the venue.

QUOTES:

Anna Domingo, marketing director at the View from the Shard: “As a relatively young venue a key focus for us is to create experiences that the customer will enjoy and want to repeat. Our visitors come from all walks of life, but what unites them is their use of mobile devices inside the building. The implication of mobile engagement is to use that mobile activity as a gateway to offer all kinds of new experiences, and eventually to communicate with them on a 1:1 basis.”

Incentivising Customers and Increasing Loyalty with Personalised Offers

In developed countries, more than 90 percent of consumers’ time is spent indoors, and 70 percent of those consumers carry Wi-Fi enabled smart phones into venues. This large addressable market, compounded with growing numbers of companies planning to implement location-based mobile marketing, presents a unique opportunity for venues to take advantage of Aruba Mobile Engagement.

Stadiums, retailers and hotels rely heavily on loyalty to encourage customers to stay on premises longer and ultimately influence their buying decisions. These venues can retain more customers for longer by improving their experience and delivering location-based personalised offers and incentives to eat, shop and relax onsite.

With the new Aruba Mobile Engagement, venues now have a mechanism to deliver tailored promotions to their customers when they are on the premises. Once customers complete the opt-in process, notifications will automatically communicate with the customers’ mobile app and deliver personalised offers, promotions, and nearby amenities and services. Since this platform uses venues’ Wi-Fi infrastructure and easy-to-deploy Aruba Beacons, Aruba Mobile Engagement is simple to manage for the IT staff and use by customers.

The new home of the San Francisco 49ers and one of the world’s most advanced open-air sports and entertainment venues, Levi’s® Stadium seats 68,500 spectators inside a 1.85 million square foot facility. Levi’s® Stadium’s state-of-the-art network was built on Brocade switching and Aruba mobility technology to deliver exclusive content, venue information and services to visiting fans.

“From a technology perspective, it is imperative that we engineered a network infrastructure that not only delivered ultra-fast connectivity to tens of thousands of fans’ mobile devices, but also provided a mobile engagement experience like none other,” said Dan Williams, Vice President of Technology for the San Francisco 49ers, the team that provided the technology infrastructure and mobile app to the Santa Clara Stadium Authority’s project.

“By partnering with Brocade for switching and Aruba for mobility, we were able to blaze new ground and create a platform that gave our fans the experience of a personal game day command centre in the palm of their hands. Fans can now watch instant replays, receive precise turn-by-turn navigation, and order food directly from their mobile devices. Visitors get to experience the facility and game like never before by greatly enhancing their onsite experience.”

About Aruba Networks, Inc.

Aruba Networks is a leading provider of next-generation network access solutions for the mobile enterprise. The company designs and delivers Mobility-Defined Networks that empower IT departments and #GenMobile, a new generation of tech-savvy users who rely on their mobile devices for every aspect of work and personal communication. To create a mobility experience that #GenMobile and IT can rely upon, Aruba Mobility-Defined Networks™ automate infrastructure-wide performance optimization and trigger security actions that used to require manual IT intervention. The results are dramatically improved productivity and lower operational costs.

Listed on the NASDAQ and Russell 2000® Index, Aruba is based in Sunnyvale, California, and has operations throughout the Americas, Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific regions. To learn more, visit Aruba at http://www.arubanetworks.com. For real-time news updates follow Aruba on Twitter and Facebook, and for the latest technical discussions on mobility and Aruba products visit Airheads Social at http://community.arubanetworks.com.

© 2014 Aruba Networks, Inc. Aruba Networks’ trademarks include Aruba Networks®, Aruba The Mobile Edge Company® (stylized), Aruba Mobility-Defined Networks™, Aruba Mobility Management System®, People Move Networks Must Follow®, Mobile Edge Architecture®, RFProtect®, Green Island®, ETips®, ClientMatchTM, Virtual Intranet AccessTM, ClearPass Access Management SystemsTM, Aruba InstantTM, ArubaOSTM, xSecTM, ServiceEdgeTM, Aruba ClearPass Access Management SystemTM, AirmeshTM, AirWaveTM, Aruba CentralTM, and “ARUBA@WORKTM. All rights reserved. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Harry Langdon .