Aruba Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ:ARUN) today announced that the San
Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) has chosen Aruba’s wireless
infrastructure, including its 802.11ac solution, to deliver a rich, innovative
museum experience for its anticipated one million plus annual
visitors. As part of a broader expansion of the museum’s facilities, the
new Wi-Fi network will provide an interactive museum experience for
patrons, while enabling operational efficiencies for the museum and its
staff.
SFMOMA’s renovation plans include a brand new facility that will open in
2016 and will double the size of the museum to 450,000 square feet. The
vision for this new facility is to provide a context-rich experience
that allows visitors to use mobility solutions to interact and learn
more about the exhibitions and artwork as they navigate through the
museum. As SFMOMA CTO, Leo Ballate, explained, while the museum
previously offered Wi-Fi, it was considered a convenience rather than an
integral part of the museum experience.
“In the spirit of serving our community, we’ll not only offer free Wi-Fi
and enable Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), but we’ll also use the Wi-Fi to
facilitate our visitors’ entire experience. We want to encourage a
deeper and more meaningful engagement both with the museum and the
artworks themselves,” Ballate said.
In the new facility, the Gigabit Wi-Fi network will allow visitors to
connect via their personal mobile devices. A new SFMOMA mobile app will
also enable visitors to leverage indoor location services to access
specific information and details about selected artworks on view. SFMOMA
aims to use this app to deliver a wealth of visitor benefits including
advance ticket purchases, special features for members and personalized
tours – including assistance with artwork interpretation – that begin
the moment visitors enter the museum.
In addition to the numerous benefits this new network will bring to
visitors, the museum is excited about the operational efficiencies it
will offer. Said Ballate, “With the robust wireless infrastructure Aruba
has provided, many of the museum’s manual processes will be streamlined
and automated to help improve operations and therefore our bottom line.”
Ballate noted that SFMOMA is also moving to Microsoft Lync for unified
communications, with the goal of allowing employees to be more mobile
while enhancing collaboration and communication during their workday.
“With a few exceptions like conference rooms, we are moving to 100%
softphones,” Ballate said. “We want to allow staff to communicate with
Microsoft Lync from either their desktop or any mobile device they
happen to be using so they can still connect to their corporate
voicemail, instant messaging, screen sharing and all of the other
aspects of unified communications. The end result is a much more mobile
and efficient workforce.” Ballate also believes that the combination of
SFMOMA’s wireless network and Lync deployment will benefit the museum
employees who work in the field conserving, storing and moving the
museum’s artworks, as well as interacting with the artists.
To achieve its goals for a rich visitor experience and more streamlined
operations for staff, SFMOMA has deployed two separate networks – one
for employees and staff and one for public access. Together, the
networks use more than 200 Aruba
200 Series 802.11ac access points, 7200
Series Mobility Controllers, AirWave
network management, and ClearPass
Guest.
“With our partners, TeeCom and Intervision assisting us, we did a
tremendous amount of research to determine which vendor was the best in
class and could deliver on our vision,” said Ballate. “While Aruba was
clearly the leader in the Wi-Fi space, it wasn’t just about that. Aruba
had a broader ‘solutions story’ including mobile engagement, which
really matched our long-term needs.”
Ballate says that SFMOMA is excited about discovering more ways to
leverage the new infrastructure to improve the overall experience for
their visitors. The museum is currently evaluating the use of Aruba
Beacons and the Meridian Mobile App software to enhance the location and
wayfinding capabilities of their mobile app.
“We really want to use the network and mobile app to learn more about
our visitors – what exhibits most interest them, which artwork is their
favorite, what can we be doing to facilitate their enjoyment of the
museum – and in turn, offer our visitors a rich experience that they
wouldn’t typically get just walking through any museum facility.”
Additional Resources:
Video: New
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) Set to Transform the Museum
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.
© 2015 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
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Intranet AccessTM, ClearPass Access Management
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and ARUBA@WORKTM. All rights reserved. All
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Copyright Business Wire 2015