Blog
I stared at my bracket this year with the usual hopelessness. Then I realized I had been on a lot of these campuses recently, so I felt connected with a lot of schools. There are a lot of universities that have deployed
7signal’s Wi-Fi Performance Management system in the last year. So I thought rather than tossing a coin, perhaps the best way to fill out my bracket was to choose schools smart enough to make proactive Wi-Fi management part of their operations.
Of course, a number of our customers were not in the field of 68, so this posed a small problem. For example, William and Mary has never made the NCAA tournament and Georgia Tech’s basketball prowess has declined in recent times. A lot of the California State schools were missing from the field as well. Perhaps it's simply a case of these schools valuing their student's campus Wi-Fi experience over their basketball programs. The ROI for great Wi-Fi is arguably greater in the long run, so I get it. But fortunately, 7signal has customer representation in all four of the regional brackets, and some of them can really play ball like the University of Northern Iowa in the East regional who I think will give Villanova a real run for their money in the Sweet 16. In the Midwest regional, I think 7signal customer Texas can make a nice run too by upsetting Butler and challenging Notre Dame.
Now, some of the schools competing this year are still wrapping up 7signal evaluations. I was thinking of using this as a great sales push -- "There's still time! Get your order in this week to make the 7signal bracket!" When filling out my bracket, I really hated it when two of our schools faced each other early in the tournament, or when I was faced with the reality that Kentucky is not our customer yet.
So how does my 7signal bracket look? Pretty good, if I may say so! The Big 10 is well represented, as is the Big 12 and the ACC, so I think we will do alright. And I sure hope all the prognosticators about Northern Iowa are correct. I put $20 on this bracket, so I’m serious!
But overall I think it's the Badgers' year, so I'll see you at the party in Madison.