Villa Erba, digital breakthrough with Retelit
Agreement reached to provide the exhibition and conference centre with a new high-performance data network infrastructure, capable of further blending physical and virtual events, while also supporting the evolution of the smart city in the Como area.
Villa Erba, the flagship of the Italian exhibition and congress sector on Lake Como, is focusing on digitalisation to increase the international appeal of its services. The infrastructure of the Retelit Group will be used for the construction and maintenance of a new data network to cover the indoor and outdoor exhibition spaces, the congress centre and the Villa Antica.
This will provide a high-performance network service to deliver Digital Services for the benefit of event organisers and visitors, and will be based on innovative solutions such as the WiFi 6 standard - able to provide bandwidth, high concurrent access density and low latency - for the active Wireless network and the use of Bluetooth technology on-board the Wi-Fi systems, enabling, amongst other things, wayfinding solutions to help visitors find their way around the fabulous location. The solution provided is Software-Defined Networking (SDN), a new approach to complex network architectures based on cloud computing technologies. Adopting the SDN approach facilitates the administration and configuration of infrastructure to improve performance and monitoring.
The network infrastructure, which will be operational from autumn and will be managed through Retelit's Multicloud platform, will allow Villa Erba - a venue for large high-end events and exhibitions held by major brands from the textile, fashion, and automotive sectors, among others - to expand its capacity to host events. Enabling new ways to blur the line between physical and virtual and providing new digital services for companies, supports, both now and in the future, the most futuristic exposure strategies made possible by innovation. The solution developed by Retelit will also make it possible to facilitate and streamline event organisational processes, giving Villa Erba new competitive leverage to tackle the changes in the MICE (Meetings, Incentives, Conferences and Exhibitions) sector and the new methods for interacting digitally with guests.
"We are proud to be able to offer our infrastructure to support the digital transformation of a centre of excellence such as Villa Erba, strengthening its competitiveness on the international stage. With this project Retelit enters the strategic and challenging sector of trade fairs and congresses in a role that suits it perfectly: as an enabler of innovation and opportunities to support the local and national economic and business fabric” said Federico Protto, CEO of Retelit Group. “The project brings together network infrastructure capacity and the changes made possible by IoT and 5G applications, opening up future developments of strategic interest for the Como area".
The innovative solutions supported by Villa Erba's network infrastructure - from virtual and augmented reality applications, place of interest mapping, to interaction with IoT platforms and devices that will be increasingly advanced and high-performance, and 5G - enable new paradigms that will be useful not only to the services of Villa Erba and its exhibitors, but also with a view to the "smart city" development of the Como area, projecting it into an increasingly connected future that offers more and more possibilities.
"This is a plan which formed part of Villa Erba’s development strategy as early as 2018 and gathered pace in 2020 - a year that saw a substantial shutdown in the sector following the COVID-19 pandemic. It has taken form in 2021 with the selection of Retelit - one of the foremost operators in the TLC sector to take part in the bidding process - as the ideal partner to increase the digital offer within Lake Como’s exhibition and conference sector, and to continue to match the leading conference areas across the world” added Pietro Bonasegale, Villa Erba General Manager.