06

OPTIMIZING THEGOLDEN CITYHost Committee President & CEO talks Super Bowl Wi-Fi Success

16

CONNECTINGTHE MASSES

KEITH BRUCE

PCM powers SuperBowl City with premiumgame-day Wi-Fi

PRESIDENT & CEOSUPER BOWL 50 HOST COMMITTEE

30

FANS DEMAND HIGH DENSITY Mobile traffic causes a cosmic shift in modern wireless network design

24

HOT-SPOTS IN THE HOT SEATIs offering free Wi-Fi safe for customers and for you?

As technology has changed over the past few decades, you’ve trusted the PCM family of brands to bring you the latest products, solutions, and services to enhance your business and its ability to thrive. With our abundance of experts, knowledge, and industry insight, we’re excited to have the opportunity to pass that valuable information off to you.

The goal of Tech Journal is to be your window into the world of IT. In every issue we’ll provide you with articles on the latest technology trends, stories about IT successes, and news about the latest products and innovations in the industry. As a CIO, CTO, Technology Executive or Enthusiast, we understand that you seek data and resources that will help enhance your daily operations.

This month’s issue is all about Wi-Fi. From keeping your network secure to providing free access to thousands of fans — we delve into the topics that will open your eyes to the state-of-the art technology being implemented by businesses of all sizes. Our special feature on Super Bowl City’s Wi-Fi implementation spotlights our

TABLE OF CONTENTSpartnership with the Super Bowl 50 Host Committee led by CEO Keith Bruce. Learn about the challenges PCM experts overcame to accomplish such a large-scale and intricate task successfully.

“The Right Technology, Delivered” lives and breathes through the pages of this magazines with beneficial material to inspire growth for your IT environment. We hope you’ll read, learn, and connect with us as we help you make the most of your technology. 

A PCM COMPANY

Tom DucatelliExecutive Vice President, Inside Sales

Michael RappExecutive Vice President, Field Sales and President, En Pointe

Sincerely,

Welcome to the first edition of PCM’s Tech Journal!

OPTIMIZING THE GOLDEN CITY

SECURITY AND FREE PUBLIC WI-FI

PCM’S WI-FI SOLUTIONS

DESIGN CONSIDERATION FOR HIGH DENSITY WI-FI

06

24

16

30

The Wi-Fi Solution that enabled the Super Bowl fan experience.

Why businesses are heightening their free Wi-Fi security.

Leading the way in large-scale wireless networking.

Keeping up with the demand for public connectivity.

GIVE YOUR FANS

IN-VENUE EXPERIENCETHE ULTIMATE

PCM SPECIALIZES

IN HIGH-DENSITY WIRELESS IMPLEMENTATION

GIVING ARENA FANS A FAST, SECURE, RELIABLE

CONNECTION ON GAME-DAY.

Connect with an expert: sports@pcm.com or visit: www.pcm.com/sportsandentertainment

The Super Bowl 50 Host Committee sets out to make Super Bowl 50 the most shared in history. When the credits roll at the end

of a movie, you see the names of

hundreds of people whose behind

the scenes work is unnoticed.

While the costumes, set design and

soundtrack don’t call attention to

themselves during the course of

the film, their presence still elevates

the viewing experience. Making an

unfelt, seamless impact on the fan

experience is also the essential task

of a great Wi-Fi network. We spoke

with CEO Keith Bruce about the Host

Committee’s approach to connecting

their fans.

Wireless for the MassesIn 2013, when I accepted the job as

CEO of the Host Committee for the

50th Super Bowl in San Francisco

and Santa Clara, I knew visitors would

arrive expecting Wi-Fi coverage that

would live up to Silicon Valley’s and

the Bay Area’s tech-forward reputation.

But we wanted our network to go

unseen. Our indication of success

would be if everyone logged in to our

network once and from then on just

forgot it even existed.

Fortunately, the Wi-Fi networks at Levi

Stadium (where the Super Bowl itself

would be held on Feb. 7) were already

world-class and being bolstered in

anticipation of over 70,000 fans who

would be attending on game day.

Just as challenging, however, would

be deploying from scratch a similarly

strong, world-class Wi-Fi network that

could span 80 acres for nine days at

Super Bowl City in downtown

San Francisco.

By design, Super Bowl City was a

fan village, a commemoration of

the 50th Super Bowl as well as a

celebration of Super Bowl 50’s host

city and surrounding region. From

We ultimately selected the joint team of PCM and Extreme Networks

FEATURED ARTICLE

OPTIMIZING THE

GOLDEN CITY PCM wirelessly enables the Super Bowl 50 fan experience.A conversation with Keith Bruce and the leaders who brought Wi-Fi to the Super Bowl 50 Fan Village.

Jan. 30 through Feb. 7, people in

downtown San Francisco, headed to

the big game or not, could enjoy food,

entertainment, shopping, activities,

sponsor pavilions and live music from

11 a.m. till 10 p.m. each day. It’d be

completely free. And, as we were

planning it, the Wi-Fi coverage would

be always on, never patchy, and

consistently strong.

Of course moving from theory, to

concept, to a fully deployed and

realized network solution was the

dilemma. So by the end of 2014,

when we first put out our request

for proposals for our future Wi-Fi

partner(s), we knew we had a long

road ahead. One of my previous

contracts in my role as president of

the global sports agency SportsMark

was working at the 2012 London

Summer Olympic Games for clients

including Visa, Adidas, Omega

watches, Cisco and Proctor &

Gamble. As it happened, Cisco was

also a key contractor that provided

Wi-Fi coverage for the 2012 games.

And though I couldn’t have known it

at the time, the Wi-Fi deployment, in

particular, at the Olympic Park would

serve as a crucial model for how I

wanted the Wi-Fi network at Super

Bowl City to work. If we wanted Super

Bowl 50 to be the most shared Super

Bowl in the history of the sport, we

needed Wi-Fi that would support all

the uploads, downloads and social

media activity we hoped to enable.

As part of the selection process,

we then went on to enumerate more

than 40 specific requirements we

were placing on our Wi-Fi network’s

specs, including: 802.11 a/b/g/n/

ac compatibility, VoIP, GPS and both

IPv4 and IPv6 support; license-free

technology working in a free RF

frequency; and a comprehensive

system management tool.

Receiving several sponsorship bids,

we were in the unique position to

choose the strongest provider. We

ultimately selected the joint team of

PCM and Extreme Networks, who was

already a sponsor of the NFL and had

substantial experience working on

other NFL projects including the 2014

and 2015 NFL Draft which also served

as models for what would become

Super Bowl City.

More than Just a Fan VillageIn April 2015, the Super Bowl 50 Host

Committee officially announced Super

Bowl City, a fan village that would be

open eight days prior to Super Bowl

and on the morning of the game as

well. No other Super Bowl before us

had a fan village open as long as we

planned to have ours.

In a press announcement I stated,

“Many people don’t realize that

Super Bowls are more than just

a game – they are week-long

extravaganzas that offer fun activities

for kids and families, interactive

exhibits for sports fans and events

that fans and Bay Area residents can all enjoy. We are designing the Bay

Area’s Super Bowl celebration to offer

something that everyone can enjoy,

and reflect the spirit and personality of

our entire region.”

PCM and Extreme Networks had already had substantial experience working on other NFL projects.

6 7

At the same time that we were making public

announcements of Super Bowl City, we began planning

for its Wi-Fi solution with the joint team of PCM and

Extreme Networks. Super Bowl City would be located in

downtown San Francisco along a big “T” consisting of The

Embarcadero near the city’s Ferry building and Market

Street running perpendicular to that. Throughout the

city, there was at least the beginning of a network called

“#SFWiFi” service found in selected areas and city parks

around the city and county of San Francisco. However

#SFWiFi was built for a comparatively few users sporadically

logging in from cafes and street corners. We expected

hundreds or thousands of users at any moment, a number

that would have easily overwhelmed the city’s network. As

much as we appreciated the network throughout the city,

we quickly understood that we would need to complement

#SFWiFi with a more robust temporary network.

In our early meetings with the key players such as John

Burke from Extreme Networks, Brian York from PCM and

the San Francisco City Department of Technology, it was

clear that there were many parallels to assembling a high-

capacity, high-stress Wi-Fi network in an existing facility—

like a stadium or other permanent venue, with some very

specific differences. One key difference is that the entire

environment was to be temporary, meaning it would be

designed, deployed, managed and removed in a matter

of days. The second key difference was the open-air

nature of the environment, which is very different than a

typical facility. The streets of any metropolitan setting are

saturated with an invisible traffic of radio frequencies and

communications compounded by the physical elements of

stone, steel and glass all of which either absorb or reflect

That robustness that PCM spent all those months designing into the system really paid off. 

these signals.“When you go about designing and deploying

in this type of environment, it is similar to planting and

watering a garden” says Brian York, Senior Vice President

of PCM’s Endpoint Technologies Group – and a key liaison

for the Super Bowl City Wi-Fi effort. “You can put a sprinkler

in the middle of a garden and turn it way up, and you will

water every corner of the space. But the truth of the matter

is you’re not going to enjoy the results. Inevitably, you

will not water evenly and will fail to support the growth of

what you have planted. In the case of this project, there

was a great deal of environmental elements that absorbed

signal or reflected it in various portions of the space.

Therefore, very careful planning and tuning was needed to

overcome these environmental characteristics to provide

seamless coverage throughout this expansive and varied

environment. Using the garden analogy, the trick was to use

the environment to our advantage to water efficiently, evenly

networks) like The Hyatt and Federal

Reserve.

“We minimized reflection in the design

and later, the implementation, by

aiming signal inward from the edges

of the event space,” York says. “The

analogy here is we had a number of

little sprinklers, all along Market Street

and into the plaza areas, which gave

us discrete control over the footprint

of coverage. This approach also gave

us tremendous density and throughput

— both qualities we needed to be able

to support the crowds of thousands of

users traversing the space.” To refine

this concept and plan out the proper

placement of every Wi-Fi access point

— and there would ultimately be 80+

Wi-Fi access points throughout Super

Bowl City — PCM also had to conduct

its own suite of measurements

throughout the 80 acre campus to

discover where the background Wi-Fi

network noise was strongest and

where other environmental elements

might come into play once Super Bowl

City’s network goes live.

To accomplish this phase of

planning, the PCM team working

with Extreme Networks, prepared

a special appliance laptop with

external antennas and specialized

software that could carefully monitor

radio signals, interference and

reflections. This tool-set was used

to measure and analyze the unseen

traffic up and down Market Street,

The Embarcadero, Steuart Street,

Washington Street, Clay Street and

the public spaces in Justin Herman

Plaza and Sue Bierman Park that the

footprint would include.

“We had conducted radio frequency

(RF) surveys as well as spectrum

analysis ahead of time, so we had

an idea what the RF footprint would

look like,” York says. “We used data

from our ten prior stadium projects

in the last two years combined with

the site data collected to model how

much interference was in the area,

and how much RF reflection we should

experience from the buildings. The

result was a comprehensive design,

of antennas, access points, switches,

connectors and enclosures, tailored

for this environment.

The Wireless Plan of ActionAt this point the design, the bill of

materials and footprint of the coverage

area were well defined but there was

still a great deal of planning needed to

provide a complete solution. A critical

element in any wireless solution is the

network and physical infrastructure

that supports it. In the case of Super

Bowl City, the Wi-Fi network would

be built atop a wired network that

relied on a backbone of 11 miles of

temporary fiber optic cabling.

The fiber optics was the foundation

and additionally, PCM deployed

nearly six miles of copper cabling,

providing both connectivity and

power to the access points and other

downstream devices. “The fiber is

the backbone infrastructure to the

IDF closets and provides connectivity

back to the Internet,” Burke says.

“Due to the configuration of the

site, we decided to use a ring style

backbone that linked the various IDF’s

to the switches. These switches then

serviced all the wireless access points

as well as all of the downstream wired

devices via Category 6 copper (Cat6)

cabling. The Cat6 served as the

conduit for both connectivity as well

as power to those endpoints.”

Putting the Plans into PlayWith plans completed it was time to

map out the deployment and begin

coordination with the various entities

involved in making Super Bowl City a

reality. The team along with the Host

Committee had multiple municipal

entities from whom we needed permits

and permissions to proceed, both for

our Wi-Fi solution and for the larger

Super Bowl City.

“Super Bowl City was unique in some

ways in that there were multiple

jurisdictions on the ground,” says

Rosie Spaulding, Vice President of

Event Planning & Operations for the

Super Bowl 50 Host Committee. “On

the ground, we were split between the

Port, Recreation & Parks, and DPW.

And obviously we had to work with a

number of other agencies closely like

the MTA.”

and avoid watering our neighbor’s sidewalk in the process.

Market Street was the base of the “T” that contained a

row of vendor facilities including San Francisco Visitor

Information booths, Macy’s Star Zone, Kaiser Permanente’s

“#My2MinuteDrill” attraction, Hyundai’s Blue Drive

Lounge and, just before the intersection of Market and

Embarcadero, the NFL Network’s structure and Super Bowl

City broadcast facility. But, as noted above, these structures

were also in the middle of a street that was surrounded by

giant structures (each with many of its own internal Wi-Fi

The Super Bowl City’s open air environment proved to be a challenge for strong wireless connectivity.

Over 500,000 fans passed through Super Bowl City’s 80 acre campus in the days leading up to the big game.

8 9

PCM and Extreme Networks Design a Wireless City Within a City

PCM Network Solution handled the extra traffic without a hiccup.

Fortunately, to obtain the necessary permits for all aspects

of our Wi-Fi deployment, the City of San Francisco, through

its office of the Department of Technology, handled any red

tape we needed to clear.

“This is why the City was such an integral part of our Wi-Fi

solution,” she says. “Because the work that needed a permit

was handled by the city. We had the blanket permits to put

the stuff out there, for Wi-Fi specifically.” We also worked

on developing the human resources needed to implement

Super Bowl City’s Wi-Fi solution. Specifically, we wanted

to ensure that anyone who used the network — whether a

person on the street or a vendor or partner in one of Super

Bowl City’s temporary structures — could get any technical

support they might need. So we started training 100

volunteers to serve also as what we were calling

“Wi-Fi Coaches.” “They were in their normal volunteer

uniforms, and then they wore buttons that said ‘Wi-Fi

Coach,’ and they carried little flags,” says Stephanie Martin,

VP of Marketing and Communications for the Super Bowl 50

Host Committee.

“They all wore backpacks, so the flag was in the backpack.

They walked around and made sure that if people had

any issues whatsoever with the connectivity or also just

wondering, ‘How do I load a photo to Facebook?’ They were

for users where this was new to them, or maybe they weren’t

as savvy. It was like the Apple Genius Bar, but roaming.”

Separately, as pieces of the puzzle began to come together,

the design for Super Bowl City’s Wi-Fi network continued

to evolve. “The end design didn’t look much like the initial

design that began nearly a year earlier,” Burke says.

“The final design was locked just a few weeks from when

the event was ready to kick off,” Burke says. “Because there

were daily changes and dynamic interaction happening for

weeks leading up to the event. A lot was based on vendors.

As vendors came in, Super Bowl City signed them up for

services. Those vendors would have specific networking

needs, whether it’d be wired or wireless or both. And that

would then come back to us, and we’d accommodate these

changes to the design and ultimately what would be the

rapid deployment to follow.”

Fans Experience a Wi-Fi Touchdown On Jan. 23, with months of planning now completed and

the actual site construction now in front of us, we took

over the streets in and around the Super Bowl City site.

In terms of the Wi-Fi network, the goal was clear: Get it

ready for optimal operations, in time for the official opening

of Super Bowl City on Jan. 30 at 11 a.m. and most of the

construction went as planned. But that’s only most of it.

Some of it required some nimble footwork and improvisatory

thinking. For instance, we planned to attach some of the

Wi-Fi access points to street lights and trees in the open

spaces where no temporary structures were near. As the

deployment date drew near, it became clear that these

locations would not work for mounting of Access Points

and antennas. So we improvised. The PCM team came up

instead with a temporary mounting solution on some 12-

foot tall steel masts. These Wi-Fi masts would be secured

to barrier fencing, often near the perimeter of the site as

to provide the best coverage while not obstructing the

needs of security, or any fan experience elements such as

signage, displays or otherwise. This was a meticulous task

to find the optimal mounting locations. So no small part of

the field team’s build out included hours spent placing our

custom Wi-Fi masts in the optimal placement based on all

of our planning. But these were just the perimeter Access

Points. “For the Wi-Fi access points attached to temporary

structures, wherever possible, we evaluated 3D drawings of

those structures in advance to plan ahead what mounting

hardware and cabling would be needed.” York says. So

with the team at the ready, the hardware staged and ready

to deploy, spools of fiber optics and copper cabling, the

streets were blocked off and the race began, to stand up a

world-class City within a City.

“It took us a year to plan this,” York

now says of the effort. “And the team

stood it up in 48 hours.” Working

around the clock and alongside the

construction of buildings, fencing,

pathways and thousands of workers

that all were on a collision course with

a deadline that would not move.

And sure enough, come January 30

at 11 a.m., we were ready for the

crowds. We’d projected 100,000

visitors per day to Super Bowl City

over the course of its nine-day

existence. But over opening weekend

alone, we actually logged some

300,000+ visitors. That robustness

that the PCM and Extreme Networks

team had spent all those months

designing into the system really paid

off too. It handled the extra traffic

without a hiccup. “We never had an

outage,” York says. “In the first 24

hours it was up, they had 25 or 30

mile-an-hour winds. And the wind

whipped down through Market Street

and blew over a bunch of fencing

and caused some minor damage. The

wind was the only significant event

that we had when we were there is

we had to go back and remount some

AP’s and reconfigure some things

because they had issues with the wind

and rain on the first night.”

In fact, our network worked so robustly

that we were able to advance the

plan to piggyback the city sponsored

#SFWi-Fi on top of our network. The

advantage for our users is if they

had already signed their device in

to #SFWi-Fi before, they wouldn’t

even need to sign in to our network.

They’d just show up to the Super

Bowl City campus and, without doing

a thing, they’d have Wi-Fi. “People

were used to connecting to the San

Francisco Wi-Fi network, even though

the Super Bowl Host Committee

offered an SSID for the Super Bowl,”

says Burke. “We ended up making

sure that was included in the system,

so that patrons would come in, and

they’d automatically connect to

the Wi-Fi. From a user standpoint,

they just want to be connected.

They don’t necessarily know what

they’re connected to. So we took

that complexity out of it. If somebody

walks in and have connected to San

Francisco Wi-Fi before, they’ll connect

to the Super Bowl Wi-Fi.”

Then, once the winds and rain had

died down, and #SFWiFi was part of

the system, the Super Bowl City Wi-Fi

network told a boring — but very

functional — story. It worked. Day in

and day out.

All told, 1.1 million fans came through

Super Bowl City and nearby NFL

destinations The 50th Mile and the

NFL Experience (at Moscone Center).

During Super Bowl City’s closing

weekend, we saw 300,000 visitors

in a day. At maximum, our network

had 15,350 peak concurrent users.

In all, 340 gigabytes were used for

streaming apps, we handled 35

gigabytes of point-of-sale activity,

alongside 411 gigabytes of social

media. Our peak bandwidth was 3

gigabytes per second. And if you add

all the traffic up, Super Bowl City’s Wi-

Fi solution handled 6.8 terabytes (i.e.

6800 gigabytes) of data.

“That’s phenomenal,” Burke says.

“That’s a lot of data. The key for us is

that people were really using it. It’s

not that people were making small

transactions or a few picture posts.

That shows real use. That number

helps us understand that it was

successful not only in that people

connected to the Wi-Fi — but they

were able to successfully share their

data. Whatever they were doing, they

were able to operationally use the

network for what it was designed to

do. And that was to share the Super

Bowl City experience.”

“We hit the nail on the head,” York

says. “It was up and bulletproof for

the entire time. That doesn’t happen

by accident. That’s a lot of dedicated

people who really know what they’re

doing to make this happen on the

world stage. You should be able to

count on the Wi-Fi network like the

utility that it is. And if it’s done well,

it’s inconspicuous.”

Super Bowl City’s Wi-Fi solution handled 6.8 terabytes of data.

The PCM team worked 48 hours around the clock to implement the wireless solution.

10 11

Game Changing Connectivity

Connectivity Excellence

During Super Bowl Week Busiest time period:

came through Super Bowl City, the 50th mile & the NFL experience

for Super Bowl City’s closing weekend, 2/6-7

on-site build-out

of approximate coverage

of fiber optic cabling

GB/TB were used for streaming apps

Peak Bandwidth Total Data Transferred

GB/TB were used for POS apps

GB/TB were used for social media apps

PCM continues to be the premier choice for large-scale, commercial wireless technology solutions across the nation. Our specialized team of networking solutions architects is ready to deliver a fast, efficient Wi-Fi solution for your next event. 

used Apple devices

used Android devices

used Windows devices

activationsof Cat5e cabling

Wi-Fi clients peak concurrentusers

1.1 Million Fans

80 Acres

340.1 GB

3 GB/s 6.8 TB

35 GB 411.4 GB

11 Miles 6 Miles 70% 28% 2% 38

300k Visitors 72 Hours 44,365 15,350

Support of SF Free Wi-Fi, SB50 Wi-Fi as well as retail, POS, Admin and Security networks.

PCM - The New Face of Wi-Fi Business and Technology

Today’s world is undergoing digital disruption and in order for enterprises to operate effectively in today’s environments, they have to focus their security efforts on stopping advanced threats in the current dynamic threat landscape. What you need is an integrated, threat-centric next-generation firewall. One that not only delivers granular application control, but also provides effective security against the threats posed by sophisticated and evasive malware attacks. The Cisco Firepower 4100 Series Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) is the industry’s first fully integrated, threat-focused NGFW. It delivers comprehensive, unified policy management of firewall functions, application control, threat prevention, and advanced malware protection from the network to the endpoint.

Provides a next-generation intrusion prevention system (NGIPS) to deliver industry-leading threat protectionIncludes a fully integrated advanced malware protection (AMP) solution that addresses both known and unknown threats, along with an integrated sandboxGives you the ability to track and contain malware infections

Automatically correlates threat events with your network’s vulnerabilities so you can focus your resources on the threats that matter mostAnalyzes your network’s weaknesses and recommends the best security policies to put in placeIntegrates with a number of Cisco® network security products to take advantage of your previous investments and provide stronger security

The Cisco Firepower 4100 Series NGFW is unique in the industry because it is the only next generation firewall that:

Contain known and unknown malware with leading Cisco AMP and sandboxing. Get application firewalling (AVC) for 4000 commercial applications, plus additional custom applications.

The Cisco Annual Security Report identifies a 100-day median time from infection to detection, across enterprises. Cisco reduces this time to less than a day.

Gain superior visibility into your environment with Cisco Firepower next-gen IPS. Automated risk rankings and impact flags identify priorities for your team.

Get unified management and automated threat correlation across tightly integrated security functions, including application firewalling, NGIPS, and AMP.

Call your PCM Account Executive today and protect your environment against advanced threats.

Meet the industry’s most effective threat protection.

Stop more threats

Gain more insight

Detect earlier, act faster

Reduce complexity

Find the right compute solutionfor the right outcome. Every timeDiscover how the HPE Compute portfolio provide solution for:

That’s the Power of One Infrastructure and management platform - HPE BladeSystem with HPE oneView

Application migration to cloud

Modernizing business processing with SAP

Enterprise HPC for business insights

Content depot for big data - object storage

For more information visit : www.hpe.com

Accelerating nextHPE ProLiant Gen9 Servers

powered by Intel® Xeon® processors.Intel Inside® . Powerful Solution Outside.

PCM SETS THE

That is why when the Super Bowl host committee approached

PCM about a wireless solution for an 80-Acre Super Bowl City

campus supporting 300,000 visitors; our team of experts was

up for the challenge.

The first step in successfully accomplishing a task of this

magnitude for PCM was understanding the customer’s

objective. Fort this project the Super Bowl Host Committee

wanted a strong, secure, fast connection to allow fans

the ability to share their experiences easily with their

social networks.

Full municipal communications architecture was what was

needed to support everything from fan experience, to point

of sale, to security, to administration - and for a period of time

needed to become the municipal network for a portion of the

city of San Francisco.

When it comes to a cutting-edge technology solution, no venue is too big for PCM.

TECHNOLOGY BAR HIGH

PCM’s experts reverse engineered all of the technological

elements into a timetable in a finite window of opportunity to

go and execute. Having implemented wireless for 10 large-

scale open-air environment, high-density projects in

just the last 2 years PCM was able to accomplish

the task, and deliver on their promise of fast and

secure Wi-Fi for thousands of users.

To connect with a PCM Sports and Entertainment expert email sports@pcm.com

or call your Account Executive Today.

The main challenge to implementing Wi-Fi for Super Bowl City was tackling the size and scale of the venue. The event required secure, temporary, wireless access for an 80-acre, open-air environment.

Sports stadiums are some of the most robust early adopters of Wi-Fi.

By 2020 nearly two-thirds of enterprises expect their desktop PCs to be replaced by mobile devices wirelessly connected to the network.

Today 61% of employees work outside the office, using on average 3+ devices daily for their work activities.

S ince it first supplanted wired LANs in the 1990s,

Wi-Fi networks have primarily been passive, data-

consumption networks – in which more data travels

to (mostly immobile) end devices rather than emanates from

them. But in the smartphone, tablet, wearable and social

media age, in which every user is also the hub of their

on-the-go personal and professional social networks, this

traditional dynamic is being flipped on its head.

In 2015, 59% of workers said they used social media in

the workplace; while 39% said social media sites and tools

enable them to be more productive. And mobile devices

are flooding the workplace just as rapidly as social media.

Today 61% of employees work outside the office at least

part of the time, using on average 3+ devices daily for their

work activities. And by 2020 nearly two-thirds of enterprises

expect their desktop PCs to be replaced by mobile devices

wirelessly connected to the network. (Sources: Spherion,

Citrix, and Gartner.)

In other words, it is common place for us to interact with

friends, family, coworkers and institutions where we do

business with via an application on some sort of mobile

device. The fact is that the number of social network-savvy,

mobile device-based workers will only be increasing your

workplace in the years ahead. And they’re upending your

company’s Wi-Fi network in the process. Whenever I give

a public talk, I ask the corporate CIOs in the room by show

of hands how many designed their wireless solutions to be

broadcast networks. Very few hands ever go up.

This industry shift is as big an evolutionary step in Wi-Fi

networking as we’ve ever seen in the field. And yet most

companies don’t even know it’s happening under their

Today’s corporate Wi-Fi networks are quietly undergoing a seismic shift.

The modern fan experience is shaping how businesses support their employees and customers.

MOBILITY

Fans Score Big with Free Stadium Wi-Fi

noses, let alone taking steps to get ahead of corporate

Wi-Fi’s changing dynamic.

As it happens, one small but significant sector of the

economy has already undergone the transition from passive

and content-receiving to mobile and content-broadcasting.

And the lessons learned from this sector’s Wi-Fi switch-over

could be very useful as your own business changes its Wi-Fi

solution to reflect the larger workplace trends noted above.

Sports stadiums are some of the most robust early adopters

of the mobile-device-rich, Wi-Fi broadcast networks

of tomorrow. The fan experience our networks have

enabled, with thousands of mobile devices simultaneously

connecting to the network wirelessly,

is proving out the predictions of what’s

to come in the corporate setting.

Imagine, for instance, a smartphone

user at a game today posting

snapshots from his seat to Instagram

and hosting a pre-game chat show

with his buddies a couple seats

over on YouTube. These mobile

device-using, social media mavens

simply didn’t exist a few years ago.

But they’ve changed how stadiums

structure their Wi-Fi solutions today.

And your company’s Wi-Fi network

in the months and years ahead may

increasingly resemble the stadium

networks these fans have been

pioneering. Because whether it’s

fans posting pictures and video from

their stadium seat or it’s workers

hosting video chats and multimedia

connections with clients and

coworkers, the network requirements

are not vastly different. They’re

just scaled differently. As detailed

elsewhere in the current issue of PCM

Tech Journal, PCM was a signature

partner with the Super Bowl 50 Host

Committee in San Francisco this year.

PCM helped provide Wi-Fi solutions

for the event — and in particular for

the “Super Bowl City” fan village in

downtown San Francisco during the

eight days leading up to and including

Super Bowl Sunday. It ultimately

served up nearly seven terabytes of

data across an 80 acre campus over

nine days, through wind and rain, with

minimal lag and zero downtime.

However, PCM has built out much

more than just Super Bowl City’s Wi-

Fi solution. We have also partnered

with numerous professional sports

stadiums and entertainment venues to

provide their turn key Wi-Fi networks.

From 2013 to today, we’ve served as

Wi-Fi/IT solutions provider for seven

top professional sports teams and

leading entertainment venues. (You’ve

heard of all of them.) In aggregate,

sports stadiums, arenas and ballparks

are a key driver of gate revenue over

the next five years. This is in part

because high-def and ultra-high-def

broadcasts are now proliferating both

over traditional broadcast networks

and sports websites/app platforms.

But one important counter-trend is

the social and mobile platform Wi-Fi

experience of fans in the stadium.

With so many social media outlets now

available, many fans attend sporting

events as stars of their own show

— posting their in-game updates to

sites like Facebook and Twitter and

uploading their streams of media to

photo and video sharing networks.

To support this flood of social and

mobile Wi-Fi usage, we’ve often had

to retrofit facilities built long before

designers could have anticipated

any such high demands on their IT

infrastructure. In 2016, in fact, the

largest population of sports facilities

is the “middle aged” venue, between

15 and 24 years old, that might have

been designed with rudimentary IT

infrastructure in place. But to get

these stadiums’ Wi-Fi solution up to

meeting current needs, much more

16 17

infrastructure is needed too. We’ve learned some important

lessons that we now bring to corporate clients as they

consider similar changes to their Wi-Fi networks. For one,

the target demographic of fans and consumers in these

venues is constantly broadcasting. But broadcasting can

take on both overt forms (via social media) and covert as

well (via mobile applications use). So matching marketing,

messaging and activation to these users’ broadcast

patterns is essential to monetizing the new generation of

sports fans.

How, then, do you know users’ broadcast patterns? One

part of the PCM Wi-Fi solution we deploy at stadiums and

venues is PCM Event Analytics. Event Analytics tracks and

compares usage statistics for the venue compared to other

individual venues and the entire league as a group. This

way as we centralize data for league baselines, cross-

venue analysis and game-over-game analysis, we run far

less risk of ever being surprised or blindsided by changing

usage patterns. Event Analytics, in other words, allows us

to offer a seamless and consolidated league-wide asset

for both the teams and the fans alike. Fifteen years ago,

studying for my MBA, I saw something big coming over

the horizon in the sports industry where the fan experience

and technology were on a collision course. As part of my

studies, I saw the proliferation of two way pagers that

became the predecessors to personal digital assistants at

the same time that sports statistics websites were on the

rise. Accessibility of real-time data on a mobile platform

was a foregone conclusion of this trend and as such, the

need to support the in-venue use of mobile devices was

going to increase exponentially. Not long after concluding

my paper on the role of technology in sports facilities, I

had the opportunity to assemble a team of technologists

to work on a state-of-the-art facility that served as the first

in a long line of modern sports venues across the NFL,

MLB, and the NHL. The venue was widely acclaimed as

the most technologically advanced of that era and was

particularly cited for its efficiency and flexibility. Our team

matched these themes in the development, design and

implementation of a modular and flexible technology

platform that was purpose-built to support the growing role

of mobile devices in these facilities. One crucial element

of the venue’s Wi-Fi success is its modular and easily

upgradeable IT infrastructure. If a

stadium like that lasts 30 years, it

might ultimately live through 15 or

more product cycles in Wi-Fi hardware

and software solutions. And that’s

not even to mention the bigger sea

changes, like the consumption-to-

broadcast shift in the field today.

In fact, using modular and

upgradeable IT infrastructure has

served as a model for the rest of

the industry and nearly every major

sporting venue constructed in recent

history has drawn on these principals.

From Met Life Stadium and the new

Yankee Stadium in New York to

AT&T Stadium in Dallas (home of the

Cowboys) to Levi’s Stadium in Santa

Clara (home of the 49ers) all of these

facilities, and more, have incorporated

a similar design architecture and

taken the concept further, to include a

wide array of fan amenities and

services designed to enhance the

fan experience.

And as users in both stadiums and in

the workplace follow the same general

trends — a pervasive switch to mobile

devices and ramping up of social

network usage — These two use

cases hold many things in common

and are increasingly seeing the same

usage trends as mobile technologies

emerge and are adopted by fans and

users alike.

On the other hand, company CIOs

may not have reached this far in an

article that was exclusively about Wi-Fi

deployment in a corporate office park.

So professional sports does have one

leg up over the traditional workplace.

A professional sports team and

stadium will always command a higher

profile than a traditional corporate

workplace setting.

But if you’re the CIO of a company

whose Wi-Fi networks are groaning

under the weight of shifting user and

employee demands, you might like

to know that the best Wi-Fi solution

for your workplace has some famous

pedigree. PCM’s team of professionals

that supports these high profile

projects have a saying: “There is no

SLA on game day.” Simply stated,

when the lights go on and the ball

is in play, it simply must work. In

business the game has changed.

The modern era is one of an always

connected, social media, broadcast

oriented world. In today’s business,

there is equally no SLA. Queue lights,

cameras, game on!

PCM has your solution To enable fans to have an enhanced

experience through the use of their

own mobile devices, we partner

with Extreme Networks, a trusted

technology solutions provider, to

implement temporary ExtremeWireless

and ExtremeAnalytics solutions

throughout sports and entertainment

venues across the nation.

PCM provides Wi-Fi support, services

and hardware. Together, PCM’s Sports

A professional sports team and stadium will always command a higher profile than a traditional corporate workplace setting.

and Entertainment team and Extreme

Networks helps to deliver the ultimate

technology experience for mobile

users at large venues and arenas.

Contact your PCM wireless expert

today to learn more about our

customized networking solutions for

your special event or venue.

The modular and upgradable IT infrastructure at the Cardinals’ home stadium has served as a model for the rest of the industry.

One critical counter trend in the last few years is an increasing number of fans attending sporting events as the stars of their own broadcasts.

About the Author:Brian York, SVP of End Point

Technology Group at PCM.

Brian also leads PCM’s Sports

and Entertainment team and

has personally been involved

with providing Wi-Fi solutions

to leading stadiums and

entertainment facilities across

the US. Brian and his team also

provide IT solutions to businesses

and institutions of all sizes.

18 19

Dell XC-series of Webscale Converged AppliancesBring your webscale capabilities to your data center in just 30 minutes.

Dell Nexenta Jointly Engineered Software-Defined Storage SolutionsImprove VSAN I/O performance up to 10x

Dell PowerEdge 13G ServersEnable up to 10.5x more transactions with flash-dense configurations.

Reduce configurations time by up to 99%.

Accelerate your EPP, CRM and database workloads

Dell Open Networking

Dell Active Fabric Solutions for SDN

Dell OpenManage systems management

Select Solutions

Select Solutions

Intel Inside and the Intel Inside logo are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries.

Software-defined Navigate new IT paradigms at your speed The promise of unlocking proprietary

strangleholds on storage and networking and

moving critical data center functions to familiar

x86 has the potential to unleash unparalleled

agility and efficiency. But trying to bringing

emerging technologies into legacy environments

can make implementing software-defined

strategies seem daunting.

Using a portfolio of flexible Dell software-defined

solutions, you can experience the agility and

efficiency of the software-defined data center at

your own pace, in the way that make s sense for

how your business operates. Consider an

appliance approach that allows you to swiftly

plug-and-play webscale capabilities into your

data center.

Take the time-consuming guesswork out of

deploying software-defined storage using jointly

engineered solutions. You can also build the

foundation for your software-defined data center

started today using Dell Open Networking

solutions, which allow you to eliminate learning

cure delays by choosing the operating system on

you networking switches.

Dell PowerEdge servers From your scale to hyperscale Compute is at the heart of your enterprise.

When computing platforms are optimized for

the workload, you can expect better results.

That’s why modern workloads demand a

modern approach.

As the foundation for a complete, adaptive IT

solution, Dell PowerEdge servers deliver superior

agility and reliably, outstanding operations

efficiencies, and top performance at any scale.

With Dell’s next-generation servers, you can now

bring the latest server innovations into your

organizations, more affordably that ever before,

giving you the power to do more.

Powering the Future-Ready

Enterprise You’re at the intersection of traditional and new IT.

Over the last few years, the velocity and impact of

technology evolution has been swift and far-

reaching. From the data explosion and

software-defined to cloud computing, and evolving

threats, these trends are literally rewriting the rules

of IT. It’s time to bridge the gaps-gaps

infrastructure, gaps I expertise, gaps in getting from

here-to-there on your terms, in a way that doesn’t

cause further disruption or replace old problems

with new ones.

With Dell, you can achieve your goals, without

compromise. Dell Future-Ready Enterprise

solutions give you the best balance of

infrastructure price and performance, so your

capital expenses are consistently lower. By

infusing system design with simplicity, Dell makes

technology easier for your IT staff to use as well as

more efficient to drive space and energy savings–all

considerations with reduce your ongoing

operational expenses.

Change: The only constant. You are tackling more–and bigger-challenges

than ever before. Seemingly everywhere in your

enterprise, business as usual is out: change is

in. And nowhere is this more apparent than in IT.

20 21

BREAKTHROUGH SSD PERFORMANCEIntel® Solid-State Drive Data Center Family for NVMe*

NVMe* Gives You More CPU Headroom and Lower Cost per Transaction

Supported by Standard Operating Environments

SATA & SAS Are Holding You Back

Ideal for Large Data Sets

Support more users, applications, and virtual machines per server

Deliver better user experience to your customers.

Legacy standards are designed for slow, mechanical drives

Slow transfer speeds mean processors often sit idle waiting for data

• Genomics

• Financial Analysis

• Scientific & Technical Workloads

• And more......so your existing applications work without requiring modification

$

Replaces the Performance of Six SATA SSDs1 With one NVMe* -Based Intel SSD1

6x 1=

6x Faster than SATA SSDs1

1300x Faster than Hard Disk Drive1

3x Less cPU Power per I/O Request1

50% Lower Latency than SATA SSDs1

FA

MIL

IA

R FOR M FACTO RS

U.2

FORM FACTORS

experiencewhats inside

IT: lower capital and operating expenses and increased system utilization

Consumers: improved responsiveness and a better overall experience

Developers: Faster time to marker

With NVMe, Everybody Wins

www.intel.com/ssd

INTEL INSIDE. ENDLESS POSSIBILITIES OUTSIDE.1 Tests document performance of components on a particular test, in specific systems. Differences in hardware, software, or configuration will affect actual performance. Configurations: Performance claims obtained from data sheet, sequential read/write at 128k block size for NVMe and SATA, 64k for SAS. Intel SSD C P3700 Series 2TB, Intel SSD DC S3700 Series SATA 6Gbps. Intel Core i7-3770K CPU @ 3.50GHz, 8GB of system memory, Windows* Server 2012, IOMeter. Random performance is collected with 4 workers each with 32 QD.Intel and the tIntel logo are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries.*Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others.© 2015 Intel Corporation.

Contact your PCM Network Solutions expert today to learn more.1-800-700-1000 I www.PCM.com

is the average Americans spendsocializing on their mobile devices.

have been equipped with PCMsolutions in the last 2 years.

at Public Venue wirelessmarket annually.

have been spent on improvingthe in-seat experience at sportsvenues in the last 200 years.

31

wireless connectivityFans demand

55

10

2.7

% Growth

Rate

BILLION

Large-Scale

DOLLARS

VENUES

HoursA DAY

PCM has the experience and expertise to equip your venue with the reliable,robust networking solutions to fuel the game experience.

THE INCREASE IN MOBILE DEVICES AT PUBLIC VENUES HAS FANS SEEKING SAFE, SECURE WI-FI. CAN YOUR VENUE KEEP UP?

With the explosive growth of mobile devices across the world and the continued evolution of technology, our society relies more than ever on instant access to information and communications channels via the Internet.

Delivering Secure Wi-Fi to the Public

MOBILITY

Whether it is a quick check of the weather,

reading about the latest breaking news, or

posting information to social media, we rarely

find ourselves apart from our mobile devices regardless

of where we travel throughout the day. With the advent of

cloud technologies, many of us have access to all of our

personal and business data from anywhere in the world

– of course, as long as we have access to the Internet.

Who hasn’t pulled out their tablet or laptop at a Starbuck’s

to take care of some personal or work business? This

immediate and ever-present need to access the Internet

within an increasingly mobile society has driven the demand

for wireless networks everywhere from within our homes to

PCM has had great success over the years managing wireless solutions.

just about every public venue today.

Originally, we relied heavily on cellular

networks for mobile access to the

Internet, but as we bumped up against

bandwidth and data restrictions,

along with the fact that cellular service

does not exist everywhere, we have

seen more and more free public Wi-Fi

services becoming available. When we

think of free wireless service in a public

venue most people think of Internet

access provided by local retail stores

or restaurants. Free Wi-Fi also can be

commonly found in hotels and airports

these days.

Businesses all over the world

recognize that the need for

always-on access to the Internet is

pervasive in our society, and want

to either entice you to come to their

establishment and use their free

service or just have a more enjoyable

experience while you are there. This

same approach holds true for more

and more large venues like sports

arenas and amphitheaters. These large

venues bring a special set of

requirements in order to deliver reliable

service in a high-density environment

where tens of thousands of users

access the network at the same time.

Over the past few years PCM has had

great success designing, deploying,

and managing wireless solutions for

businesses across the country. PCM

has deployed various strategies based

on the need to secure an inherently

insecure solution. One of the first

strategies for a wireless provider is

limiting the ability of one wireless client

to access another wireless client on the

same network. Blocking intra-network

traffic is common on cellular networks

and prevents a malicious user from

sniffing network traffic on the free

public network. Limiting what local

network resources a client can access

prior to getting out on the Internet

can be a function of a larger “walled

garden” approach which a provider

can use to enhance the safety of the

user’s browsing experience. Protecting

one wireless client from another

is obviously an important security

PCM has had great success over the years designing, deploying, and managing wireless solutions for businesses across the country.

PCM successfully enables digital voice, video and data for businesses.

feature, but what happens if someone

physically connects their own rogue

wireless Access Point (AP) to your free

public Wi-Fi network?

These rogue AP’s can broadcast

similar network names and trick an

end user into connecting to their

network, thus exposing their data to

a malicious attacker. While the end

user should take their own precautions

when connecting to free public Wi-Fi,

the service provider can also take

precautions by enabling network

access control measures to identify

and shutdown rogue AP’s (or any other

unauthorized network connection).

A final additional approach that a free

wireless service provider should take

is the deployment of application-aware

firewalls to block certain network

protocols and types of traffic.

Up to this point, we have discussed

security measures protecting the end

user of a free public wireless service,

but it is important to protect the service

provider as well. By blocking certain

peer-to-peer sharing protocols, a

wireless service provider protects itself

from malicious end users using the free

Wi-Fi service to engage in misconduct

like sharing copyrighted materials.

Without these safeguards, the public

venue risks finding themselves in the

center of an investigation and possibly

liable for certain activities of their users.

The strategies mentioned above center

on the responsibility of the wireless

service provider, but mentioned

earlier, free public Wi-Fi security is

the responsibility of both the service

provider and the end user.

2524

Many enterprises look to mobile device management solutions to enforce configuration and access policies.

So what responsibilities do the end users of the free

wireless service share? Precautions are necessary

when accessing any public wireless network. It should

be assumed that not only is someone watching all

network traffic moving across the free Wi-Fi network,

but they are actively trying to steal information from

you. It is possible to watch email conversations,

gather user passwords, and compile personally

identifiable information from these networks if the end

user is not careful. Whenever possible the end user

should:

• Enable a firewall within the OS

• Use HTTPS or SSL

• Encrypt your traffic leaving the local wireless

network with a VPN

• Keep devices up to date and patched

• Disable public sharing

• Enable two-factor authentication

where possible

While end users of free public Wi-Fi should follow

the above suggestions at all times, many end users

are uneducated or unaware of these guidelines.

As a result, many enterprises look to mobile device

management solutions to enforce configuration

and access policies on mobile devices that have

access to corporate data. These Enterprise Mobility

Management solutions allow the business to turn on

the features listed above via an application running

on the mobile device, thus applying best practices to

the device while it is out in the wild.

The Internet is a powerful tool, pervasive in both our

personal lives and business activities. Our expanding

reliance on the Internet and cloud services drives

the demand for mobile access to wireless service

everywhere. It is our responsibility as a service

provider in conjunction with the end user to consider

and follow security guidelines, especially when using

free public Wi-Fi.

PCM has deployed strategies based on the need to secure an inherently insecure solution.

About the Author:Patrick Lohmeyer,

Associate Vice President,

Offering Development at PCM

Acceleratingautomated intelligenceOne platform. One InterfaceOne synchronized view.

That’s the Power of One Infrastructure and management platform - HPE BladeSystem with HPE oneView

Accelerating next

Accelerate virtual workloads for 66X faster IT service delivery

Reduce downtime by an astounding 91%

Gain ultimate control over workflows and processes

For more information visit : www.hpe.com

For today’s BYOD workforce, the freedom that comes with mobility

has a dramatic effect on productivity. Adding color to the mix

catalyzes engagement across teams to spark the creativity that

drives innovation.

As such, powerful tablets like the Samsung Galaxy TabPro S are the

workstations of the future. When it comes to getting serious work

done, the Galaxy TabPro S, with its full-sized detachable keyboard

and the power of Windows 10 is purpose built to exceed the needs

of your Enterprise. Are you ready to get to work?

View Complete Product Details Here:http://smbz.us/PCMTabProS

Wherever business takes you, today’s highly mobile workforce

demands technology that enables complex tasks on the go.

Between the innovation and full-featured functionality of Windows

10 coupled with the Samsung Galaxy TabPro S your team is

empowered to reach new levels of productivity through mobility.

This winning combination makes the TabPro S an indispensable

tool for your Enterprise workflows.

Equipped with built-in security, a stunning AMOLED touch display,

exceptional battery life, full-sized keyboard, and the latest

Intel Core M processor, not only powers operational efficiency

and compatibility, but drives your business to outperform the

competition. Are you ready to hit the ground running?

When it comes to Wi-Fi deployment the truth is

that most public venues are just not prepared

for the number of devices and the amount

of traffic generated by today’s typical user. To put into

context the explosion of connected devices we see today,

the 1st generation iPhone was introduced just nine short

years ago in June of 2007. That iPhone was capable of

Wi-Fi throughput at average rates of just 22 Mbit/s. With

the exponential rise of the “app” and the ever-increasing

demand for bandwidth, never has the network had such

importance and impact on the end user experience.

In the most recent update to Cisco’s Visual Network Index1,

published on February 3, 2016, there are some staggering

data points and predictions related to mobile devices.

Here are a few highlights from the report:• Mobile data traffic has grown 4,000-fold over the past 10

years and almost 400-million-fold over the past 15 years.

• More than half a billion (563 million) mobile devices and

connections were added in 2015.

• In 2015, the number of mobile-connected tablets in-

creased 1.3-fold to 133 million, and each tablet generated

2.8 times more traffic than the average smartphone.

• There were 125 million PCs on the mobile network in 2015,

and each PC generated 2.9 times more traffic than the

average smartphone.

Predictions from the report:• Global mobile data traffic will increase nearly eightfold

between 2015 and 2020.

• By 2020, more than three-fifths of all devices connected to

the mobile network will be “smart” devices.

• Three-fourths of the world’s mobile data traffic will be

video by 2020.

• The average smartphone will generate 4.4 GB of traffic

per month by 2020, nearly a fivefold increase over the

2015 average of 929 MB per month.

• By 2015, more than half of all traffic from mobile-connect-

ed devices (almost 3.9 exabytes) will be offloaded to the

As the needs of mobile consumers change, can public Wi-Fi keep up?

MOBILITY

Design Considerations for

High Density Wi-Fi

fixed network by means of Wi-Fi devices and femtocells

each month.

These statistics illustrate the fact that the requirements

have changed. The design of modern Wi-Fi networks

require a shift from a coverage model to a density and

bandwidth model. Additionally, we must look to the future

when determining the overall requirements for the design

and plan for growth. PCM has extensive experience in the

design, deployment, and management of high-density Wi-Fi

solutions and has been privileged to work in some of the

most challenging environments on the planet. None more

challenging than the recent solution deployed for the Super

Bowl City in San Francisco for Super Bowl 50.

There are many things that make

this deployment noteworthy, not the

least of which is that it was deployed

by PCM over a 72-hour installation

window and leveraged multiple

vendor’s hardware and software

solutions. The venue, which covered

some 80 acres, saw 1.1 million fans

and supported peak usage of 15,250

concurrent users.

During the event some 6.8 TB of data

was transferred across the network.

The event was a great success and

certainly showcased the capabilities

of our vendors’ technology; however,

the most impressive part of the

solution is that PCM engineers, project

managers, and architects proved their

ability to provide a successful solution

that outperformed expectations in one

of the most challenging environments

possible.

What is a high-density Wi-Fi deployment?Although the National Football League

and Major League Baseball stadiums

are a great proving ground for high-

density deployments, the principles

readily apply to a much broader set of

use cases.

Today we must rethink how we

deploy wireless in everything from

classrooms, large meeting spaces,

public spaces such as malls and

airports, theme parks, and of course

– stadiums and arenas. In the past,

we focused almost exclusively on

coverage. We did this mainly because

devices were not as pervasive,

applications were not as bandwidth

hungry, and the fewer access points

we used the less expensive the

infrastructure cost. Today, devices are

pervasive, users expect connectivity,

and the carriers have built in

technology within the devices to

automatically switch to Wi-Fi networks

for data offload to relieve congestion

on the cellular networks. Additionally,

many of the premium cell phone

providers charge for data, which is

an incentive for users to seek Wi-Fi

connectivity whenever possible. The

end result is that if you have a public

or guest facing network, the number

of devices connecting and the amount

of traffic traversing the network is

skyrocketing. One interesting trend

is that in the stadium space, the

paradigm is shifting from content

consumption to content creation.

Applications such as Periscope, Vine,

Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube in

combination with the advancements

in smartphone technology have

placed the mobile user squarely

in the content creation category.

Users want to contribute to the story

through social media and not just be

consumers of information. Previous

generation wireless networks in public

venues were typically owned and

operated by the major cellular network

providers. They were simply put there

to help offload data traffic from the

slower cellular network in order to

help provide a reasonable customer

experience. In this model, the carriers

held all of the analytical data (if it

was tracked at all) and not the team,

the venue, or the attraction owner.

Modern Wi-Fi networks require a shift from a coverage model to a density, bandwidth model.

Users want to contribute to the story through social media and not just be consumers of information.

Monetization of the network is a broad

topic, but at a minimum, it starts with

control. The bottom line is that the

owner of the network is in control.

Several of PCM’s customers in this

space are using their ownership of

the network and the ability to create

unique real-time content to their

advantage. First, they are able to drive

fans to the team’s app and serve the

content only when connected to the

team’s network. Why is this important?

Now the team controls the complete

experience. The second outcome is

that the team can now push content

directly to the fans, which provides a

new revenue opportunity for the team.

They are now simultaneously able to

offer a unique experience that is not

available anywhere else and offer

targeted advertising opportunities to

potential sponsors. It is truly a win-

win situation. The fan gets a great

experience and the team can help

to offset the cost of the network. One

of the key components of network

monetization potential is in-depth

network analytics.

30 31

Typical wireless management solutions can give basic

statistics of usage. This includes number of users and

amount of data transfer; however, a more robust solution is

required to truly capture useful data that can be stored and

analyzed against other data sets. Organizations are starting

to see the importance of looking at usage patterns over a

known timeline that includes additional data points. These

data points could be important plays that occurred during

the game, advertising that was shown in the stadium, or

even weather events. This enrichment of the data set takes

game and event analytics to a new level and lets us offer

our customers insights that were simply not possible

in the past.

1. http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/collateral/service-provider/visual-networking-index-vni/mobile-white-paper-c11-520862.html

Today’s designs call for far greater numbers of access

points, operating at much lower power, with very targeted

RF coverage patterns to accommodate the number of

devices and bandwidth requirements of most solutions.

Antenna types must be carefully selected and antenna

mounting locations are critical to providing the desired

result. New designs are placing a greater number

of access points much closer to the end user. Many

applications leverage a range of deployment models

including the more traditional overhead design to designs

that place the access point and antenna inside a NEMA

rated enclosure that is mounted directly under the

seat. This model provides a very predictable coverage

pattern but introduces several new construction challenges.

The number of access points required to meet design

specifications has gone up, and the complexities of

construction have increased. With this shift, the importance

of understanding the construction aspect of any project has

become critical. To plan for a successful project, one must

have a full understanding of the construction requirements

including conduit, core-drilling, aesthetics, and local codes

and regulations. With the understanding of the current

landscape it is easy to see why our customers need the

right team to make it all happen. It is always interesting to

see how our customers approach the process. Some start

with a hardware manufacturer, some start with a product

reseller, and some start with the local contractor that has

“pulled cable” in the facility.

PCM has built its reputation through many successful deployments and a team that brings it all together.

Just as in sports, the team that takes the field is critical

to success. You must have the right players in the right

positions in order to win. The right players are chosen for

their specific talents, experiences, and their ability to get the

ball into the end zone. You can easily buy an access point

from an online source or you can have an Ethernet cable

pulled to a location of your choosing, but it must function

on game day when it really matters. The team is important.

Experience is important. A proven track record iw important.

PCM has built its reputation through many successful

deployments and the most important feature of these

successes is the team that brings it all together. It takes

the right mix of technology and integration partners,

construction and cabling expertise, and hardware and

software vendors to hit the mark. High-density deployments

offer unique challenges that should be entrusted to a

team that has “been there…done that”. From design, to

implementation, to remote and on-site management, PCM

has the winning team with the services to implement a plan

for success.

0 5HOW MANY HOURS A YEARDO YOU SPEND FINDINGTHE RIGHT ADAPTER?

Start meetings faster with smart wireless collaborationWith the Intel® Unite™ solution, the search is over. Meetings start instantly and more securely whether employees arein the office or across the country. And workers can share screens wirelessly and interact with content seamlessly,with the simple push of a button.1

intel.com/workplacetransformation

1Intel technologies may require enabled hardware, specific software, or service activation. Performance varies depending on system configuration. No computer system can beabsolutely secure. Check with your system manufacturer or retailer, or learn more at intel.com.

Copyright© 2016 Intel Corporation. All rights reserved. Intel, the Intel logo, the Intel. Experience What’s Inside logo, Intel. Experience What’s Inside, and Intel Unite aretrademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries. *Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others.

PCM has the winning team with the services to implement a plan for success.

About the Author:Steven Walters, Associate Vice President, Solution Architecture at PCM

32

PCM SOLUTIONS

PCM SERVICES

Cloud solutions let you store and compute in our state-of-the-art virtual cloud or an on-premise cloud to boost efficiency.

We provide essential hosting infrastructure to support the ongoing development, testing and deployment of your business-critical applications.

Experience Networking components including routers, switches, firewall, VPSNs and the support to keep all you devices securely connected.

Mobile devices are designed for ease and portability. Trust PCM with all the top-tier devices, application and support.

We help you navigate the complexities of dealing with multiple software products and license agreements.

We take the hassles out of IT procurement and logistics with advanced

e-procurement, warehousing and integration of systems.

Contact your Account Executive at 1-800-700-1000 to learn more.

Our national team of certified engineers and technicians are experts in their field

with certifications and will consult with you on today’s best-in-class technologies.

Our technical specialists will manage, monitor and support your entire IT

environment, providing a single point of contact for your technology needs.

Our Security Solutions give you next-gen security hardware along with Antivirus and security software for your critical data.

On-Premise &Cloud Solutions

Data CenterSolutions

NetworkingSolutions

Endpoint & MobilitySolutions

SoftwareSolutions

Procurement & Logistics Services

Consultation & Implementation Services

Managed Services & Hosting Services

SecuritySolutions

We offer a wide range of solutions and services with personalized end-to-end support. Our experienced team of engineers leverages the right industry-leading technology to help accomplish your IT goals.

THE RIGHT

DELIVEREDSOLUTIONS & SERVICES

35

Priority code #

Customer #

PRSRT STDUS POSTAGE

PAIDPERMIT NO. 748Thomaston, GA

Mailing Management Dept.1940 East Mariposa Ave.El Segundo, CA 90245-3467

Vol. PC264

Fax additions, corrections, or a request to remove your name from this list to 1.310.630.3510. We do not release your private information. We occasionally share your postal address with other reputable companies.

www.PCM.com