Splendour Festival uses Haptic WiFi Solution

We are incredibly proud to announce that the annual Splendour Festival held in Nottingham will be utilising Haptic Networks' WiFi solution.

Playing host to top names such as Jess Glynne, Stiff Little Fingers, UB40, The Fratellis and Turin Brakes the festival is recognised as the city’s biggest summer day out and shortlisted in the final three for Best Festival in the national Live Music Business awards.

DHP Family and Nottingham City Council are keen to replicate the success of last year which saw 20,000 festival goers sprawled across Wollaton Park. With lots happening all over the park aside from the three music stages, including comedy in the courtyard, a kids’ area and entertainers out and about in the crowd, the festival is a fantastic day out for all the family.

George Akins, owner, DHP Family, said: “We’re delighted to bring bands to Splendour that have contributed so much to the musical heritage in this country. Once again, we’re confident that our mix of music legends along with some of the hottest artists of the moment will make it a winning day out for everyone, whatever their age or musical taste.”

Councillor Dave Trimble, Portfolio Holder for Leisure and Culture at Nottingham City Council, said: “We’re pleased to announce a great line-up for Splendour Festival that I think Nottingham people will love. Splendour really is the highlight of the summer and with acts like Jess Glynne, The Human League, UB40 and The Darkness, tickets are sure to sell fast. Splendour truly offers something for all tastes in music, and with the comedy stage and kids’ area it’s a really fun family day out.”

Haptic have provided a full outdoor Ruckus WiFi solution to enable festival-goers the solid, reliable, family friendly WiFi connection they need to enhance their (hopefully sunny!) day out.

 For more information on Haptic WiFi please click here

Ruckus Acquires Cloudpath Networks

Ruckus have announced that they have acquired Cloudpath Networks, a privately held company that provides a leading easy-to-use, secure, Wi-Fi onboarding solution for schools and universities. Cloudpath pioneered Wi-Fi onboarding self-service in 2006 and is a leader in certificate-based Wi-Fi security with over 300 deployments, from the largest universities to smaller primary and secondary schools.

Ruckus and Haptic Networks are very excited to integrate Cloudpath into our Wi-Fi portfolio for education. Schools need to be able to easily and securely onboard a wide range of different devices and users, and Cloudpath is a comprehensive, easy to use platform that enables schools to readily design and implement custom, self-service workflows that reduce the impact on IT support resources. Furthermore, Cloudpath includes industry-first support for Chromebook devices, the fastest-growing in-classroom platforms.

With the addition of Cloudpath, Northamptonshire WiFi specialists Haptic Networks continue to strengthen our portfolio and provide you with solutions to address emerging and critical market requirements.  Cloudpath will be available from November 2, 2015.

Read the full press release here

If you'd like to find out more about the ruckus wireless range of products click here to view our dedicated microsite 

 

Social WiFi - Increases sales and customer experience

Do you want to offer your customers and guests a free, easy to access, safe WiFi experience?
Would your business benefit from user data and the ability to send offers and incentives directly to customer's smartphones and tablets?

Northamptonshire WiFi Specialists Haptic have devised a Social WiFi solution that offers business owners a genuine win/win outcome.

Our solution involves no up-front costs, and no requirement for IT skills. We handle absolutely everything as a paid-monthly managed service.

To find out more click here to contact us

If you'd like to know more about what Ruckus WiFi can do for your retail organisation click here to view our dedicated Ruckus wireless microsite 

Ruckus release SPoT - Location-based services (LBS) using Wireless networks

Location Based Services are an invaluable tool in retail, entertainment and any other sector where large numbers of people are likely to move around, through or near a wireless network; effectively these systems use the WiFi probe requests of mobile devices to accurately locate a user position within an area. So why is this important?

If you can imagine running a department store, you’ll already have envisaged a few challenges:

-Ensuring appropriate staffing levels in the right place at the right time- even amongst us Brits (world champions of the art) no one actually likes queuing.

-Preventing bottlenecks around popular products/areas - you have the latest trend-topping toy in stock but customers are leaving the store and heading to a competitor because they’ve wanted to avoid the scrum at the toy section.

-You have high margin but competitively priced stock sitting unsold- wouldn’t it be great to know the optimum place to put it to ensure maximum visibility to clients?

-Analysing when people are coming to the store and how long are they staying for?

-Identifying which customers are returning- if so how frequently?

So how can you gather this information without employing a team of headcounters with photographic memories or using costly and often inefficient facial recognition linked into CCTV? (queue Daily Mail headlines about “Big Brother Shop knows your face!”) Simple answer - ask us about SPoT.

Northamptonshire Wireless specialists Haptic are offering our clients a free trial of the SPoT (Smart Positioning Technology) from Ruckus Wireless.
The solution comprises a location engine to identify a user's exact location; an analytics dashboard effectively working to simplify the data and an engagement API providing the ability to send users targeted messages based on their location.

The benefits of this solution are not restricted to Retail, the technology can add vast benefits to any organisation operating in Healthcare; Hospitality; Transportation; Education; Warehousing; Distribution to name but a few.

For more info click here to contact us

Mobile devices take top spot for online shoppers

With the recent upsurge in online purchases proving challenging for the high street, new figures have been published that show mobile devices have pipped desktops for the very first time.

The report featured in The Guardian can be found here

With our recent research detailing the benefits of harnessing Wi-Fi to win more business from shoppers using mobile devices, the news comes at the right time.

It has never been a better time to follow these two words of warning:

Firstly, make sure your company, shop or organisation has a mobile-optimised website.

Secondly, think about your e-commerce strategy and how best to ensure that those potential customers searching for your goods/services don't wind up ordering from your competition.

Contact us for further advice on how to open up an e-commerce revenue stream.

Wireless networks & SDN : Northants based Tallac announce European Launch

Sharing a hometown, a close partnership and the title of wireless specialists within Northamptonshire...we at Haptic are seldom as excitable as we have been since working alongside Tallac Networks.

Paving the way for next generation WiFi and SDN (Software Defined Networking) Tallac have expanded from the US in order to obtain a sought after share of the UK marketplace.

We feel the time couldn't be better, with renowned industry expert Clive Hallam at the helm, the future of UK networks look set to alter dramatically.

For more info on Tallac Networks or SDN in general click here

Read the full CRN news post here

Social Wi-Fi : Profitable Wireless for your Business

Social Wi-Fi enables businesses, regardless of size the ability to offer a free Wi-Fi service that combines with it's customer's social media accounts. Offering free Wi-Fi in customer facing businesses originally appeared as a value-add however in 2014 it's almost as expected as a functioning WC.

From the early days involving awkwardly asking a hotel receptionist; restauranteur or 'Big Mick' in the Red Lion for the network password, you'll have to agree the process has become slightly easier in line with public expectation. The current issues involve how best to offer access, more interestingly how to turn the situation to an easy win/win.

Offering a completely open network carries a legion of problems and potential threats to anyone that it belongs to. If customers choose to use your Wi-Fi irresponsibly (albeit heavy downloading, indecent material, streaming Coldplay) it is ultimately your liability as an operator. Contention may arise around certain aspects of legality however anyone paying witness to the embarrassing news story exposing unfiltered free Wi-Fi at a cathedral clearly shows that it simply doesn't make for good press.

Enter the dawn of Social Wi-Fi and the ability to offer simple access, reducing any need for you or your staff to aid customers with logging on. Benefits become instantaneous, below are a choice few:

According to a recent consumer survey 43% of UK shoppers now use smartphones whilst on the move to compare prices and read product reviews (up from 19% last year)

Although retailers may fear usage for price comparison, and 60.8% of smartphone owners are using in-store Wi-Fi for this, many other activities can be hugely beneficial.For example, 57.3% are actually using Wi-Fi to find product reviews, something indicating they are close to making a purchase and simply require some reassurance (and there's much that shops can do to assist here)
47.2% are searching offers to use in-store, while 36.5% are browsing the store's website. Both very positive activities for stores.
Access to real-time marketing information enables retailers to personalise the offers and vouchers sent out to customers in-store. Offers can be sent as the customer is physically browsing in store or used as a way to incentivise the customer to return e.g a clothing store offering a discount on purchases made during a subsequent visit.
Social Wi-Fi can deliver reporting akin to Google analytics for your shop. Find out who is shopping, how long they stay, how often they return, and their demographics.

For more information on the benefits Social Wi-Fi can offer your business (for as little as £29 per month) feel free to message us here

Wireless Networks - Wi-Fi as a service

As WLAN management moves to the cloud, SMEs + Public Sector finally have access to easy to manage and affordable enterprise grade wireless networks, without requiring CWNA experienced wireless engineers or IT specialists on site.

The cloud management model empowers Wi-Fi as a Service (WaaS) opportunity for sites to consolidate the management, configuration, support and upgrade to their Wi-Fi network as one easy to manage monthly service charge.

In 2013, sales of tablets outstripped both laptops and desktops, and smartphones trumped all three combined. Even when removing smartphones from the equation, by 2017 desktops will account for a mere 17% of connected computing devices in the workplace.

Mobility is as crucial for small businesses as it is in large enterprises. SME owners average three mobile devices each, and a large number of them plan to purchase tablets, not laptops, for employees.

Not surprisingly, the worldwide enterprise Wireless LAN market continues to increase at 14% annually. In North America and Europe the majority of large enterprises already have solid, reliable and well managed wireless networks. In fact, they are in the midst of refreshing 802.11abg/802.11n for the newer 802.11ac access points. But this is not so for SMEs, budget constraints and high cost of deployment mean many organisations aren’t equipped to cope with mobile devices.

It may be that SMEs struggle with the complexity of deploying a business Wi-Fi infrastructure. With the complexity of some vendor’s solutions they face a steep learning curve to deploy and manage a reliable, high performance wireless LAN infrastructure. This is further complicated by the newer, varied challenges of handling a BYOD strategy. Our research highlights that SMEs want the security and manageability of enterprise grade Wi-Fi but without the technical/IT prowess it asks of them.

The bad news is that there is still a vast chasm between enterprise grade and consumer grade/home user access points (APs). In addition to drastic performance & range differences, management, security, and roaming features limit the use of cheaper home router solutions. The SMEs we consulted recognised that cheap, un-coordinated consumer products are not adequate for the influx of mobile devices now entering the workplace, site wide enterprise-class hardware is overkill. Now Wi-Fi as a service offers an affordable middle ground

Benefits of Wi-Fi as a service:

802.11ac - Wiser to wait?

Having been asked for our opinions on 802.11ac and it’s impact for some time, we have been doing just that…delivering our unbiased viewpoint.

Although an impressive and very exciting development in 802.11 standards, 802.11ac will have most impact when ‘wave 2’ is ratified Q1 2015. Currently the ‘first wave’ 802.11ac utilises 3 spatial multi-mimo streams. The second wave will be ‘true ac’ utilizing 8 spatial multi-mimo streams; clearly representing a significant difference in potential.

It should be said that in no way are we attempting to criticise or downplay 802.11ac. (No-one likes to be called an AC Slater) The new capabilities and features within the ac standard of 802.11 are incredibly impressive, it just may pay to wait and see how far the Manufacturers of devices and WLAN solutions respond. If you’d like to judge for yourself, click here to ask us to trial some of our 802.11ac WiFi equipment.