SUNNYVALE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aruba Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: ARUN) today announced Aruba Mobile Engagement, an interactive and personalized mobile solution based on Wi-Fi and location services powered by Aruba Beacons. Aruba Mobile Engagement enables organizations to deliver customized push notifications and precise onsite navigation to users’ mobile devices based on their opted-in, personalized 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.
In developed countries, more than 90 percent of consumers’ time is spent indoors, and up to 55 percent of consumers own Wi-Fi-enabled smartphones. This large addressable market, compounded with a growing number of companies worldwide planning to implement location-based mobile marketing, presents a unique opportunity for venues to take advantage of Aruba Mobile Engagement.
With Aruba Mobile Engagement, customers can securely opt-in to receive mobile push notifications they care about using Aruba Meridian-powered apps. Participating customers’ in-venue positions are then determined using mobile apps that recognize Aruba Beacons Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) technology to securely engage mobile devices inside venues. By using the venue’s existing Aruba Wi-Fi infrastructure, IT administrators can centrally manage hundreds of Aruba Beacons and help their business partners increase revenue streams and customer satisfaction.
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 customers no longer wish to receive notifications, they can simply opt out ending all communications between the customers’ mobile devices and the venue.
Incentivizing Customers and Increasing Loyalty with Personalized Offers
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 personalized 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 personalized offers, promotions, and nearby amenities and services. Since this platform uses a venue’s Wi-Fi infrastructure and easy-to-deploy Aruba Beacons, Aruba Mobile Engagement is simple for IT staff to manage and for customers to use.
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 center 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.”
Enhancing Patient Experience While Complying with Healthcare Regulations
Recent healthcare policies encourage hospitals to provide patients with critical information in a variety of languages. Currently, hospitals are forced to distribute information by means of multilingual pamphlets or signage. This is not only inefficient and costly when making modifications, but also causes a distraction for staff members focused on critical patient care. With Aruba Mobile Engagement, patients receive up-to-date information in the language of their choice though HIPAA-compliant, secure push notifications to their mobile device. Additionally, patients receive information relevant to the department they are in. Since patients must opt-in to push notifications the first time they are located within the hospital, patients will only receive information relevant to them.
Additional Customer and Industry Analyst Quotes
Nebraska Furniture Mart is the largest home furnishing, flooring, appliance and electronics store in North America. Its retail outlets range in size from 450,000 to 560,000 square feet, which makes it critical for customers to be able to effortlessly locate products.
“Our customers love us because we are a reputable, one-stop-shop for everything from furniture to high-end electronics,” said Robyn Messerly, software development, Nebraska Furniture Mart. “Aruba Mobile Engagement turns our customers’ smartphones into personal shoppers. When they enter one of our stores, we can now give them turn-by-turn directions to our products’ exact location in the store.”
Aruba Mobile Engagement also has applications in the nonprofit sector. The American Museum of Natural History is one of the world’s leading scientific institutions with over five million annual visitors, a collection of over 33 million specimen and artifacts, 45 galleries, and 26 interconnected buildings. The Museum is evaluating Aruba’s Mobile Engagement platform for use as part of its groundbreaking Explorer app. Supported by Bloomberg Philanthropies, Explorer provides visitors with turn-by-turn directions and location-based information.
“We are very much looking forward to testing Aruba Beacons for indoor positioning,” said Anne Canty, SVP for Communications and Marketing at the American Museum of Natural History. “Indoor location awareness is a critical feature in a complex as large as the American Museum of Natural History, which consists of dozens of interconnected buildings constructed over more than 100 years. The Museum has worked with Aruba’s Meridian platform since 2010, when we launched the groundbreaking Explorer app, which allows visitors to navigate across four floors of galleries as well as to cafes and restrooms.”
“A rapidly emerging best practice for fostering loyalty and engagement in customer-facing verticals such as hospitality, retail and healthcare is being able to deliver user-specific content to consumers’ and patients' mobile devices based on their physical location,” said Nolan Greene, Research Analyst, Network Infrastructure, IDC. “Aruba's Mobile Engagement solution gives venues a simple-to-implement tool for delivering a more helpful customer experience that promotes a stronger business to customer relationship."
"Public-facing enterprises - particularly in markets like retail, hospitality and healthcare - are discovering the benefits of an integrated mobile engagement strategy that combines location-based technologies with value-added applications," said Sheryl Kingstone, Research Director for 451 Research. "As the industry evolves to address consumer privacy concerns, as well as these organizations' need to better drive customer loyalty, increase revenues and improve overall engagement, companies that can act swiftly to combine app development with new technologies like BLE beacons will be the best positioned for success."
Availability
Aruba Mobile Engagement will be generally available in the first quarter of 2015.
Additional Resources
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Mobile Engagement Infographic:
www.arubanetworks.com/mobileengagement_infographic -
Customer Deployments and Videos:
http://www.arubanetworks.com/mobileengagement -
Aruba Mobile Engagement Solution Page:
http://www.arubanetworks.com/solutions/mobile-engagement -
Aruba Mobile Engagement Blog:
http://community.arubanetworks.com/t5/Technology-Blog/Exploring-the-Great-Indoors-with-Aruba-Beacons/ba-p/212621 -
Airheads Community:
http://community.arubanetworks.com/ -
Social Media Channels:
http://www.arubanetworks.com/company/socialmedia/
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.
