IBM has revealed how it is using cloud, big data and mobile technologies to help tennis fans across the globe feel part of the Wimbledon Championships later this month.
Big Blue has been a supplier of IT services to the Wimbledon Championships for 24 years, with the aim of making the experience as immersive for people watching at home as it is on court.
If you can't be here, how do we provide you with the next best thing?
The event is broadcasted to more than 200 countries, with the likes of the BBC devoting large amounts of airtime, red button content and web space to covering it.
However not all broadcasters are in a position to do this, explained Mike Desmond, commercial director at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club (AELTC), which is why building out the event's online and mobile content has become so important in recent years.
For example, the event's official website was overhauled last year, while previous tournaments have seen the emergence of Wimbledon-themed iOS and Android smartphone apps.
"The Wimbledon brand is very important [and] what we want to do is give everyone who accesses us through whatever platform...a sense of what the brand is all about," he said.
"If you can't be here, how do we provide you with the next best thing?"
Desmond revealed that, despite 2012's crowded summer sports schedule, the website revamp prompted a marked rise in the number of unique users visiting the site during Wimbledon fortnight, rising from 15 million in 2011 to 16.9 million last year.
Meanwhile, the number of mobile app downloads doubled to 1.5 million.
The website's navigational tools have been tweaked ahead of this month's Wimbledon Championships, and a new iPad app is also in the offing for 2013, revealed Desmond.
"The iPad app is built around everything you would expect to see at Wimbledon. We want to make it as immersive as we possibly can," he added.
2012 also saw the launch of a new Live @ Wimbledon broadcast service, which offers viewers live commentary, supplemented by match coverage of one game per set per hour.
"The idea is not to compete with our broadcast partners...and we do say, if you want to see this [match] to completion, switch to the BBC," Desmond added.
Sam Seddon, IBM's Wimbledon client and programme executive, said the iPad app is designed for users that may want to catch-up on the day's on-court events in their homes later in the day.
"You can use it throughout the day, but what this provides is this sit back, lie back at home experience where you can still engage with the championships and get all the rich information [about the players and the scores]...while you watch the broadcasts," Seddon added.
Clouded insights
IBM is using its SmartCloud Infrastructure and its Dynamic Provision technology to ensure its online presence can withstand the peaks and troughs in user demands.
"What that allows us to do is, not just look at historic information, but build into that the schedule of play and player popularity [to keep the site up and running]," explained Seddon.
"If you have a US player that is going to be on Centre Court at the same time the East Coast wakes up and gets into the office, you'll see a spike in demand. We're now factoring that into...how we're provisioning our cloud environment."
IBM launched a new application last year called SlamTracker, which is designed to provide users with real-time insights around a particular match, and help them catch up on all the action if they start watching halfway through.
"We've analysed data from eight Grand Slam years, [covering] 41 million data points and by analysing that we've been able to identify the three things a player needs to do to improve their chances of winning," said Seddon, and the results are featured in the app.
The service has been redesigned for 2013, to include social media feedback.
These insights will also be used to shape the way content is delivered at future events, and in turn ensure the Wimbledon experience is being enjoyed as intended across the globe.
"We'll be tracking the level of positive social sentiment about those players as the match unfolds and how that is reflected in the social discussion over the course of the match," he said.
"By capturing publically available information...what we're going to be doing is aggregating that information to understand from a geographic point of view who is saying what and where," he added.
