Imagine 70,000 screaming teenagers at a pop concert all trying to access the nearest Wi-Fi access points to share photos via Facebook and Twitter.
Then imagine 70,000 screaming American football fans using the same service to applaud or grumble about their team, order snacks and check their email.
Now imagine the stadium’s owners trying to find out what kind of things these ticketholders are using the Wi-Fi service to do, what devices they are using and how well the service is working.
That’s the challenge Enterasys, a Boston-based firm which provides networking solutions for Gillette Stadium, home to the New England Patriots, sets out to solve.
Since Enterasys began providing high-density Wi-Fi for the Patriots’ home last September, the Gillette Stadium has played host to countless football games and numerous concerts – including a recent Taylor Swift gig.
"At the Taylor Swift concert the [online] interaction was twice as high as at a football game, because the demographic is much younger," says Enterasys CEO Chris Crowell.
"It’s the next generation who are driving this and their expectation is to interact socially with their extended community. It’s about who you’re connected to in your extended family."
Enterasys’s onefabric product is a software-defined networking solution which the company claims offers a level of insight unmatched by the firm’s competitors.
A search for an IP or Mac address on a regular networking solution brings up the machine in question – but does not tell the company whose Wi-Fi service the machine is using or what is has been doing.
Enterasys’s onefabric changes this, allowing companies to search what devices are being used by one person, and what sites those devices are visiting.
"That’s a dramatic simplification, and just because of that real-time visibility that no-one else can provide, a lot of people are buying it," says chief technology strategist Markus Nispel.
"Then you can manipulate the data. You can change policies for me or look at the history of my client. You can check the quality of the signal I’m receiving on my PC and even see how many types of device are connected too."
The big plus for companies is that they can monetise this data. "You can then target messages and marketing to a whole host of customers themselves based on their interests," explains Nispel.
So by making as much information visible as possible, Enterasys hopes its product gives companies the best chance of making money – it certainly beats rivals, whose networking solutions rely on connected users passing firewall devices to capture information.
"They have a fraction of what we can provide," believes Nispel – who adds that an Enterasys-commissioned survey found that 89% of companies using such solutions did not know what their customers were using their networks for.
However, should this level of exposure of an individual’s data be a cause for concern?
It is unlikely that the tens of thousands of people at the Taylor Swift concert read the user agreement before uploading personal photos and visiting websites.
But neither is it likely that they care, contends CMO Vala Afshar. "You’re not as stringent as the older generation in terms of privacy," he tells me.
He disagrees that privacy is a redundant concept in the age of social networking, but goes on to claim it is there to be capitalised on.
"I don’t think privacy is dead, but it’s for sale," he says. "[Companies] will be able to determine the buying behavior of the consumerand will be smart enough to remind them [about products].
"Companies that embed social analytics will best serve their customers."
Dean Jones, VP for UK and Ireland, says Enterasys is simply making use of information already available, and that it is up to the companies using the software to decide on the policies they outline in user agreements and what they do with the data they compile.
"We’re not spiking anyone, we’re just looking at the information that’s always flown across the network," he insists.
EMEA director of channels Mark Pearce adds: "We haven’t had any concerns but we just provide the tools. You don’t have to use the capability."
Though many of its customers do, and the Boston-based firm suggests that data on where someone is would prove useful for the emergency services, which could locate someone suffering a heart attack far more easily.
That is a less likely scenario than companies trying to understand more about their customers – as at Gillette Stadium – and Pearce says the firm is in talks with seven Premier League clubs to provide a similar service.
Though he points out that a football game has far fewer breaks than its American counterpart, and so less time when spectators will be using their phones. He thinks such well-known venues work best as an advertisement of what the company can do.
"It’s a proof point more than anything else," he explains.
And the company hopes its product will help it scale new heights after being bought by rival Extreme Networks for $180m earlier this month.
The two firms predict their combined revenue could hit $650m – $750m once the sale goes through (which it is expected to do by mid-November), and Enterasys believes the move will see it become a top four player in the industry.
With more reach into markets like Asia Pacific and the Middle East, and Enterasys’s product doing something its competitors are not, it could claim a higher spot than that in the not too distant future.
