As we settle into a new normal, companies around the world have begun planning for their reopening with new corporate protocols and strategies to ensure a safe return to the office. At the same time, technology solutions – from monitoring occupancy to providing advice and enforcing policy – are emerging daily to help reduce potential risk for the thousands of employees as they return to work.
In May, Juniper Networks introduced strategic solutions to support contact tracing for the AI-Driven Enterprise. With Mist’s proven AI-driven Wi-Fi Juniper Access Points, patented virtual Bluetooth® LE (BLE) and Premium Analytics solutions, we are able to deliver industry-leading location services to maximize user safety in the workplace.
Last month, our strategic alliance partner, NEC, launched a Digital Office Project that realizes a new way of working in the COVID era. The project leverages the power of digital transformation and various advanced ICT systems, such as biometric authentication and image analysis. NEC has been working on the project at its headquarters in Tokyo since July of this year.
Juniper Networks is proud to collaborate with NEC to identify use cases and provide solutions that complement NEC’s facial recognition and thermal cameras with our own AI-driven solutions.
NEC’s Digital Office Project, New Work Style in the New Normal Era, outlines 8 use cases that will help provide services to employees and visitors safely and conveniently, including:
- NEC Digital ID Gateless Entrance/NEC Digital ID Entrance/Exit Gate
- Cashier-less Facial Payment with Face Mask (in-house store)
- NEC Digital ID Payment POS (in-house store)
- NEC Mask Wear Detection
- NEC Whereabouts Information Guide
- NEC Congestion Visualization
- Authorize transactions with face authentication (lockers, vending machines, etc.)
- NEC Digital ID Guest Welcome Signage
Juniper technology will play a key role in NEC’s project; specifically, it will be used in the Whereabouts Information Guide (use case #5) and Congestion Visualization (use case #6) as noted above.
In dynamic workplace environments where employees and visitors move around during the workday, there is no single technology that can trace people in real time. The combination of biometric data, image analysis and AI-driven network analytics is unique in the industry and will enable scalable and cost-effective solutions to maximize user safety in any part of the workplace, even in areas where cameras can’t be installed for privacy protection.
The Juniper location services technology can also provide information on a user’s whereabouts (use case #5) with enhanced way finding; while the Juniper hot zone alerting feature can be used for congestion visualization (use case #6). Our proximity tracing solution can also improve NEC’s project, helping companies to inform those who may have been in close contact with infected employees during work hours.
Juniper location services include User Engagement, Asset Visibility and Contact Tracing applications like historical proximity tracing of employees, journey mapping, high traffic zone identification and hot zone alerting. The solutions leverage real-time data and insights from the Juniper Wi-Fi deployment to minimize IT costs and improve accuracy. Location data of devices obtained from third party systems can also be uploaded using the Mist open APIs.
These innovations will fuel NEC’s Digital Office Project, enhance the original use cases and bring new possibilities to enterprises as they navigate this new environment.
Learn more about the Juniper Contact tracing here built with the AI-driven Mist Platform.
