Image Gallery: Aruba Atmosphere

Aruba Atmosphere 2017 drew approximately 2,500 attendees – 550 of those being partners – a record number for the annual event.

The conference was held at the Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center in Nashville, Feb. 26-March 3. Keynotes centered on the power of mobile, cloud and IoT.

Channel Partners was there. Click through our gallery for a recap.

Aruba partners, Airheads, vendors and distributors mingled at the Welcome Reception in the Innovation Zone, which featured a combination of Aruba solution pods and vendor booths. Here attendees meet with Ekahau, for wireless design, and Imageware Systems for its GoVerify ID product for mobile biometric user authentication.

United Airlines was a featured presenter at the morning keynote, along with Tractor Supply Co. and Time Warner.

Brian Doyle, senior manager, engineering for United, talked about the ambitious Wi-Fi infrastructure upgrade underway across the company. The upgrade aims to create standardization worldwide. Over the past six months, the airline company has replaced 1,300 access layer switches and 500 core switches.

There was no shortage of distributors on the Innovation Zone floor. Tech Data, Avnet, Synnex and Ingram Micro touted the services and enablement that they offer partners.

Aruba works with about a half-dozen distributors in North America.

The Collaborative Cube from HPE Intelligent Spaces – Workplace is part of the vendor’s mobile-first, digital workspace capability model that can be customized to offer mobility, productivity, collaboration, location and innovation for customers.

The Intelligent Spaces – Workplace pieces of the overall model include indoor location services such as wayfinding — finding people and things, and location context; and experience innovation such as employee app, room scheduling, visitor management, automated meeting rooms and desk hoteling.

Solution pods demonstrate how Aruba technology is used in vertical industries such as retail, hospitality, health care and education. They were a central focus on the Innovation Zone floor.

Here, attendees learn about how Wi-Fi and mobility services such as guest Wi-Fi and indoor location could transform the retail experience.

Showing attendees some love, Aruba’s Appreciation Night included a pub crawl at two popular downtown Nashville locations: BB King’s and Wildhorse Saloon.

Good-spirited attendees rode the mechanical bull at the Wildhorse.