Ruckus Unveils Smart Positioning Technology (SPoT) Service

The Ruckus Smart Positioning Technology (SPoT) service has been unveiled. It is believed to be the first cloud-based, smart positioning location-based service (LBS), which offers carriers, service providers and enterprises the ability to provide value-added services over Ruckus smart Wi-Fi networks.

The technology comes at a time when there is more demand for the service among businesses to follow customer trends. Also, the indoor location services market will go beyond $2.5 billion by 2017, ABI Research predicts.

Ruckus SPoT is cloud-based, and provides APIs for third party developers. It can be used for analytics and mobile application offerings, the company said.

Ruckus Smart Wi-Fi access points can be used for indoor or urban environments, where GPS or cellular tech may not work. They take advantage of the indoor positioning algorithm which came to Ruckus after it acquired YFind Technologies. One important trend related to the technology is that 87 percent of a typical American is spent indoors, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

“By knowing where clients are located, companies are able to help them get wherever they need to go, making the network experience better for them, or use data from their location to optimize their experience,” the company said in a statement. “In addition, network operators can deliver location-relevant content to users based on their proximity to points of interest, including timely retail offers—even security and safety notices.”

The Ruckus SPoT smart positioning solution features: SPoT Positioning Engine; SPoT Location Analytics Dashboard; and SPoT Engagement Tools. In addition, the Ruckus SPoT location ecosystem gives partners an open API and SDK. They can be used to provide customized location analytics and mobile apps.

Ruckus SPoT location ecosystem partners include Euclid and Skyrove, location analytics companies, and Front Porch, ITC Infotech, Purple WiFi, SangInfo, and TechStudio – mobile application development partners.

One clear benefit is how Ruckus SPoT can help identify client location. A heat map lets businesses see where customers are located – and compare traffic among zones.

"Our innovations in location-based client positioning are driving new opportunities for operators and enterprises to easily leverage their Ruckus Wi-Fi infrastructure to support intelligent positioning services indoors, where people use Wi-Fi most," Selina Lo, president and CEO of Ruckus Wireless, said in the statement. "Our unique Cloud-based service approach gives customers a simple and powerful way to add immense value to their Ruckus Smart Wi-Fi networks, and the ability to easily enable new services. Cloud-based service enablement also allows for instant service provisioning without significant CAPEX contribution."

"We see location-based services to be one of the key drivers for wireless LAN market growth starting in 2014," Rohit Mehra, vice president, Network Infrastructure, International Data Corporation (IDC), added in the statement. "As with other Cloud applications, Cloud-based location services can offer scalable, elastic compute resources for enterprises and service providers to collect, monitor, and provide real time analytics that are essential to providing rapid insight on user location and behavior, enabling improved user satisfaction or other business services that can be monetized."

The technology can be used for different verticals. In the retail market, shopping patterns can be analyzed to understand customer retention, and business and network performance improved. When it comes to the hospitality/hotel sector, Ruckus SPoT can be used with loyalty programs to improve customer satisfaction. That includes automatic check-ins, navigation and instant coupons.

Also, in healthcare Ruckus SPoT helps employees and visitors to navigate facilities, and managers can allocate resources more efficiently. Airports, convention centers, stadiums, theme parks and even cities can use the technology for crowd control. Public transit operators can use the tech to offer passenger and traffic information, too. And when it comes to education, the tech shows where students and staff are located.

Ruckus SPoT will be offered in Q2 of 2014 globally. A subscription-based service, it can be purchased on a one-, three- or five-year period for $25 per Ruckus access point per month.