April 30, 2018 By BlueAlly
SANTA CLARA, Calif., April 30, 2018 – Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, today announced that the Canadian Museum of History, one of the most visited museums in Canada, has deployed Aruba’s secure wireless infrastructure to provide a mobile-first experience for its visitors, exhibitors and employees.
The Museum, which boasts more than 1.2 million visitors a year, contains 300,000+ square feet of historic exhibits including its recently-opened Canadian History Hall, and offers rental services for its unique spaces, conference rooms and theaters.
In designing the Canadian History Hall, the Museum’s new state of the art signature exhibition about Canadian history, the Museum’s IT team knew there would be high demand for Wi-Fi and wanted to enable interactive experiences for visitors. To meet these expectations, the Museum not only built a new network for the Canadian History Hall, but also refreshed the wireless network for all of its galleries and public spaces. According to Cédric Larose, Infrastructure Architect for the Museum, museum clients today expect Wi-Fi to be fast, reliable and able to support a growing number of devices, and the Museum needed a secure, reliable solution to meet these growing needs and deliver a positive user experience.
The Museum deployed the following Aruba mobile-first solutions for its digital transformation:
- Gigabit Wi-Fi 325 access points for high traffic exhibits
- Lower density 205H access points for meeting rooms
- AirWave for network management
- ClearPass for secure connectivity and policy management
- Mobility Controllers for centralized wireless control
With the Aruba network in place, visitors can purchase tickets from their mobile devices, eliminating long lines, and allowing the Museum to offer a better overall visitor experience.
Additionally, the new network gives event organizers and attendees a faster, more secure experience.
“With our Aruba infrastructure, we can ensure that event organizers will not only be able to connect their personal devices, but also conduct webcasts or stream video without worrying about the network connectivity,” said Larose.
Many museum employees will also benefit from the mobile experience, which allows them to access business applications throughout the museum. For example, employees can use their tablets to scan visitors’ tickets at checkpoints throughout the Museum when the visitors are entering a specific exhibit or theater.
With an increasing number of visitors and new types of devices on the network, the Museum plans to utilize the full network access control (NAC) capabilities of ClearPass to secure the network. According to Larose, they also plan to use ClearPass to support IoT devices such as HVAC and lighting systems, as well as interactive exhibits.
Said Larose, “With ClearPass as a guard at the door, we will be able to authenticate everything joining the network. With our secure Aruba wired and wireless infrastructure, we can confidently offer our visitors a connected experience they won’t forget.”
