Intelligent Venue as a Service – Pushing the frontier forward

Have you ever asked a public cloud provider about the computing infrastructure that has been deployed in his data centre? No, you focus on the SLAs vs cost contract offed. Now, imagine realizing an intelligent stadium and the only contractual agreement with the sports club is based on business outcomes (rather attaching a detailed bill of material). Or, imagine transforming the guest experience in a hotel for a fixed cost per guest night (rather asking for a lump sum cost). If this vision for venues triggers your interest, then let us discuss how this could become the norm in the near future. 

Initially, we need a short definition of an intelligent venue; it is any public place that people gather together to live, entertain, or work. It could be a residential building block, a modern enterprise office, a huge shopping mall, a busy airport, an indoor music arena, a traditional museum, a sports stadium, … or even a future city. 

There are two major drivers that trigger the digital evolution of these public venues; (i) improve visitors and guest experience –usually reflected to new or increased revenue streams- and (ii) optimize operations –usually reflected to less operations and security costs.

Building an intelligent venue requires the integration of digital solutions from diverse vendors and independent software vendors (ISVs). The need for agile and reliable networking, computing and storage infrastructure is undisputable. The real value, though, is generated by the data collected and the analysis performed in diverse data sources in order to offer personalised experiences to local guests, employees, fans, etc. There are data sources related to individuals, e.g. current location, or to crowds, e.g. instantaneous queue length. By analyzing data in real-time, it is also important to select how to influence behavior or trigger actions to individuals, probably via smart apps, digital signage, notifications, kiosk, etc. 

For example, how much would be the service improvement if a fraction of the fans (e.g. 15%) had pre-ordered their snacks at their seats before the game break and been asked to collect them via an expedite queue after receiving a notification message to their smartphone? You may recognize the infrastructure components (e.g. WiFi connectivity at the venue bowl), interaction with the fans (via smart app notifications) and the operations improvements (i.e. smooth the peak service rate during a game break). Obviously, an improvement that is simple to realise becomes critical for the venue operations and may have a huge economic impact.

Back to the main topic; is an Intelligent Venue-as-a-Service (IVaaS) offering compelling enough for today market? Are the customers mature enough to accept this model? It could be argued that the answer is YES! Firstly, the leading CIOs have realized that their role is to support business innovation via technology rather than to manage the enterprise infrastructures, systems, and applications. Secondly, technology has long been a capital expense investment with a declining business value during its functional life. But today, new consumption-based models offer simpler and quicker access to advanced technology resources that are important for the digital transformation in a constantly evolving market.

Intelligent Venue-as-a-Service offerings are expected to become the norm in the near future. Leading consulting organisations have revealed their focus on designing pre-integrated solutions -to a specific level of detail- that brings together key market solutions offered by diverse vendors/ISVs, already pre-integrated and tested at scale. The customers are allowed to have moderate customization on the final solution, but the overall (solution) outcomes are pre-defined in advance. This approach for delivering as-a-Service complex solutions allows reducing the deployment costs, management overheads, and integration risks for customers. In addition, solution providers are required to leverage financial services that minimize initial customers’ investment (CAPEX), allowing customers to pay a monthly service fee, as their guests -fans, visitors, employees - experience the benefits of the digital venue transformation. Last, but not least, solution providers are well-positioned to take full responsibility to monitor and operate the overall “venue technology platform” allowing the customers to focus on designing personalised experiences that "touch all the guest senses".

Concluding, the market is already adopting subscription-based offerings related to complex IT solutions. Therefore, the Intelligent Venue-as-a-Service value proposition is going to gain significant market interest in the future under the condition, though, that solution providers are able to further transform their portfolio and push their service frontier forward.-