Image Gallery: Aruba Atmosphere

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 Atmosphere: Welcome Reception

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.

Aruba Atmosphere: The Nashville Connection

Nothing better than country music by The Nashville Connection to get attendees ramped up for the Day One keynote session. Keerti Melkote, senior vice president and general manager with Aruba, focused the morning presentations on software, the as-a-service delivery model, and insights.

Aruba Atmosphere: Featured Presenters

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.

Aruba Atmosphere: Airhead Education

For Aruba’s contingent of Airheads, education is vital. The vendor offered technical training throughout the conference as well as certified testing for the Aruba Certified Design Expert (ACDX), Aruba Certified Clearpass Expert (ACCX) and, Aruba Certified Mobility Expert (ACMX).

Aruba Atmosphere: Distributors in the House

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.

Aruba Atmosphere: Collaborative Cube

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.

Aruba Atmosphere: Solution Pods

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.

Aruba Atmosphere: Savioke’s Dolly

They called her Dolly. Dressed for the occasion, the autonomous service robot from Savioke made her way around the Innovation Zone floor. Applications for Savioke’s service span industries such as hotels, health-care settings, office buildings, retail and more.

Aruba Atmosphere: Rasa Networking & Niara

Aruba welcomed recently acquired Rasa Networking in sessions throughout the conference as well as on the show floor. Rasa, for network analytics, is one of two recent HPE acquisitions; the other is Niara, to deliver behavioral analytics for protection on the intelligent edge.

Aruba Atmosphere: Appreciation Night

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.

Image Gallery: Aruba Atmosphere

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