The BETT show has once again closed its doors for another year. We had a wonderful week at the Excel London and met many old faces and quite a few new ones. The stand team are currently nursing tired bones, broken feet amongst other injuries that being on a stand for four days brings. As the dust settles on BETT 2018 we take a quick look back over the last week.
The BETT show has always provided Net-Ctrl with a unique opportunity to hear directly from our clients, face-to-face, the challenges that they face on a day-to-day basis so that we can better understand their pressures and concerns. It also provides Net-Ctrl with a unique opportunity to demonstrate to our clients, new and old, how we are growing, where we are seeing new solutions solve old issues and how we can further assist them with their site(s). These are really the main reasons we attend shows like this.
At Net-Ctrl we have seen a shift in interest at the BETT show and we have tried to tailor the products that we take to match this shift and demand from the market. AT BETT 2018 we concentrated on a few key areas, securing sites with access control and lockdown solutions, protecting the users on your network through safeguarding mechanisms and providing your users with a wireless connection no matter how challenging the environment.
Lockdown and securing sites with regards to IP-CCTV, IP audio, access control and wireless locks will seem to most like new additions to our portfolio, when in fact this is a solution set that we have been working on for the last 5 years, ever since we took MOBOTIX on as our IP-CCTV partner. We now work with a select few manufacturers including, CEM Systems, Aperio and Netgenium to extend our offering beyond the camera to provide clients with a fully integrated access control solution. These solutions are able to monitor access, record who is entering and if required sound lockdown procedure in any case of alarm, in order to protect your staff and students. We had a a great number of schools requesting site visits to review their current infrastructure and work on a plan with them on how to upgrade what they already have in a phased approach towards achieving a secure site.
We also had Ruckus and Palo Alto Networks on our stand. Two manufacturers that have been in the education game for a long time and both with a great following of supporters. At BETT 2018 we saw a lot of demand for both. Ruckus continues to innovate in the wireless market and through the acquisition by Arris now also boast the former Brocade ICX switch portfolio. We’re already seeing how the Ruckus wireless solutions and the ICX switch range can work together to form a more “single-pane-of-glass” solution. We’re excited to see how this integration expands. With the addition of Cloudpath, Ruckus’ secure onboarding solution, the Ruckus’ portfolio is even more complete. Palo Alto Networks has been an in-demand solution for many years and more often than not topping clients “wish list” but being thought of as an expensive solution that’s out-of-reach. However, particularly over the last 12 months, there has been a serious shift with Palo Alto following their education price list making the platform a much more affordable addition. Their “Cyber Readiness Review” is also a fantastic tool for education clients. Very much like a “try before you buy” offering. The Cyber Readiness Review requires a trained Palo Alto engineer to visit your site, install a Palo Alto firewall on to your network in “listen-only mode”. It records all data traffic and after a two week period allows us to present a report to you on what your current solution is missing.
Now that the show has come to a close we look at all our notes for follow-up on, it’s certainly looking like 2018 is going to be a very busy year. To all those that were able to stop by, we thank you for doing so and hope that you found your visit worthwhile, for those that missed us this year, we look forward to hopefully seeing you at the next show.
BETT will always be a big part of our efforts to showcase what we’re working on at Net-Ctrl. Once the office is cleared of all the boxes brimming with bubble-wrapped cameras and access points we will look ahead to BETT 2019 and how we can improve on what has been a great show.
