INSIGHTS / News

Zeetta Networks announced today that it has won a contract with UK’s innovation agency, Innovate UK as part of the First of a kind deployment of innovation –SBRI competition to deploy the company’s NetOS® in a world-first deployment at the 27,000-seat Ashton Gate Stadium in Bristol to manage the stadium’s high-density Wi-Fi network.

NetOS® is orchestration software (a.k.a. network operating system) that provides a single, converged and secure platform for monitoring, managing and automating the operations of complex information and communications (ICT) networks.

The project will provide a large scale demonstration of the capabilities and commercial potential of NetOS® in managing a complex ICT network attached to a civil infrastructure in a dynamic and future-proof way using cutting-edge technology based on open standards.

NetOS® uniquely manages simultaneous data flows between different types of connected devices and sub-systems including wireless, optical, Ethernet and Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices. This integrated and scalable approach, able to handle from a few bits of data generated by the stadium’s turnstiles or cash tills up to Petabits of data per second passed through an optical switch managing all data traffic in the stadium, significantly increases network performance and efficiency.

As part of the Ashton Gate stadium deployment, Zeetta will also develop key network applications running on top of NetOS® which satisfy the expressed needs of the stadium’s operations teams, members of the public (visitors and fans) and security and emergency services. These network applications will allow operations staff to monitor and dynamically reconfigure network resources (e.g. bandwidth quotas) across the different network subsystems, in real time, with minimal effort and no service downtime, thereby reducing the cost of operating and maintaining the network of service delivery sub-systems in the stadium.

Martin Griffiths, Chairman of Bristol Sport Limited, commented: “From the outset we have had a vision of Ashton Gate being at the leading edge in new technology to make this a truly digital stadium. We share this vision with Zeetta Networks, a technology business spun out from Bristol University. Zeetta’s vision to deploy NetOS® as a network “orchestrator” from a control centre (without needing to manually intervene with routers and switches ) has the potential to be a game changer in stadium management and  we welcome the opportunity to be the pioneering site where this Bristol-grown technology is tested and validated.”

Vassilis Seferidis, CEO of Zeetta Networks said: “It is with great pleasure to receive this Innovate UK funding which will allow us to showcase our ground-breaking NetOS® technology in Ashton Gate stadium to manage the stadium’s connected sub-systems in a flexible, dynamic and cost effective way. On completion of the project, Zeetta will have a commercially deployed platform of a “programmable infrastructure solution” which could be further deployed in other vertical markets beyond stadia.”