IBM: SOA Seeded into 2008 US Open

08/27/2008

IBM said its technology is serving up "environmentally friendly" business solutions and fan enhancements to US Tennis Association to help focus on growing the game.

ebizQ received the following:

IBM and the United States Tennis Association (USTA) have teamed to offer exciting ways to help more fans than ever experience the action of the 2008 US Open. With a new array of personalized features including customized content and mobile alerts, the USOpen.org site will help fans get closer to the action of the US Open in ways not before possible. In addition, this year IBM is helping the USTA run a more environmentally-friendly US Open by helping reduce the energy consumption required to power the tournament's web site and scoring operations.

IBM provides the USTA with a robust infrastructure to handle the unpredictable nature of running a sporting event. Even as visits to the USOpen.org site have grown steadily over the past two years, power consumption continues to decrease due to new innovative technologies from IBM. New solutions for the 2008 US Open that IBM is putting into place include implementing Power 550 servers running Linux with new POWER6, the world's fastest microprocessor technology. IBM is taking further advantage of Virtualization and Systems Management Technologies to ensure an Optimized Infrastructure with integrated solutions for both monitoring and managing the infrastructure as well as a fully virtualized environment. These include a variety of IBM Tivoli systems management and security products, applications support from Rational, database management from DB2, and Web management from Lotus and WebSphere.

The results of these solutions include consolidating from nine servers to six servers (since 2006 consolidation has gone from 60 servers to 6 servers). Since 2006, the USTA has reduced its energy consumption by 23% and cooling demand reduced by 25%. With the POWER6 implementation it is expected that energy consumption will be reduced by 40% and cooling demand reduced by 48%, IBM said. Since 2006, visits to events infrastructure have grown by 26% while the cost per visit has been reduced by 38% during the same period. Users have increased by over 20% while the cost/user has been reduced by over 27% during the same period.

"The USTA requires a solution that helps extend the global reach of the tournament, but is also energy and cost-efficient," said Rick Singer, Director Worldwide Sponsorship Marketing, IBM. "USOpen.org must be scalable, highly available, highly secure as well as interactive, entertaining and user-friendly to ensure that fans have the best fan experience, no matter where they're sitting."

IBM's real-time scoring system collects courtside data from each umpire's chair and then stores and distributes the statistics to broadcast TV, USOpen.org, the intranet used by more than 1,500 international journalists at the event, closed circuit TV, electronic displays, and automated voice applications for players. On the broadcast courts, IBM statisticians enter winners, unforced errors, and net approaches. The scoring system ensures spectators both at the stadium and online, can view details on the current schedule, matches in progress, and results for every match by court. IBM WebSphere software, leveraging a flexible Service Oriented Architecture, streamlines the timely and accurate distribution of more than 200 million score updates to fans around the world.

In 2008, IBM and the USTA are expanding their initiative to create an even more engaging, more immersive and more personalized user experience, including My USOpen, a personalized section of the home page to track your favorite players; users can track up to five (5) of their favorite players and customize their experience by following the players' statistics, related news and interviews, match results and scores. Users can also customize three homepage sections from a list of 11 content options with their preferred choice.

"This year we're taking steps to make this Open not only more fan-friendly, but environmentally-friendly as well," said Phil Green, Director, Advanced Media, USTA. "Reducing energy consumption while being able to increase services, is an important statement for our growing fan base. USOpen.org has evolved into the premiere destination for innovative and interactive web experiences, including significant multi-media content, personalized features and real-time solutions."

IBM will provide men's and women's players on Arthur Ashe, Louis Armstrong, Grandstand, courts 10 & 13 (the five broadcast courts) with a DVD following their match. The DVD enables these players and their coaches to view and analyze their match from any angle they want to view it, their strengths, weaknesses, etc. IBM automatically indexes the video with the match statistics. Players can choose to view the video of just their aces, or forehand winners, or backhand unforced errors, or even go back to specific critical points in the match like watching the breakpoints. IBM integrates the data collected from multiple sources and formats.

Home
Webinars
Blogs
Subscriptions
White Paper
Analyst Corner

Goals

Enabling Business Agility and Reuse
Improving Business Processes
Leveraging Information and Intelligence
Governing the Infrastructure
Leveraging the Connected Web
Securing Enterprise Applications
Supporting Industry Solutions

About Us
Editorial Calendar
Feedback
FAQ
Advertise With Us
Site Map
Privacy Policy
Unsubscribe