One look at the key stats shows the complexity of FIFA’s IT project: 40,000 network connections; 1,000 staff; 45 app servers & 15 terabytes of converged voice and data traffic.

Four key players

Everyone involved in any way in the FIFA World Cup - from the teams, referees, staff and volunteers who made the event possible, to the media who provide a critical window on the event to the world and most importantly the fans visiting Germany or viewing from afar - relies on information technology. Behind the scenes, FIFA worked with four Official Partners to provide an information technology platform known as the FIFA IT Solution.

Avaya, Deutsche Telekom, Toshiba and Yahoo! are each market leaders in their respective fields and so provided the cutting-edge products and services necessary to the success of this large-scale technology implementation project. One look at the key stats confirms the complexity of the FIFA IT Solution project: 40,000 network connections; 10,000 communications and network devices; 3,000 notebooks; 1,000 IT staff members and volunteers; 25 communication servers; 45 application servers, over 8,000 kilometres of temporary cabling and more than 15 terabytes of converged voice and data traffic.

True technology teamwork

Like the 32 teams who qualified for this summer’s FIFA World Cup, these corporations know the value of team-work and formed a true partnership, committed to ensuring that the tournament goes ahead exactly as planned.

“This was a synergistic relationship which worked to everyone’s benefit,” said Michael Kelly, head of IT Solution at FIFA. “There was real pressure on FIFA to get the project done and far from keeping the partners at arm’s length, we relied on them to deliver the IT Solution project. It was in all of our collective interests for this project to work – after all, the FIFA World Cup is the biggest sports event in the world and can have a huge PR impact for each company… so failure was never an option.”

The toughest nuts to crack were the venues. “Every stadium is its own entity with various technical differences,” said Kelly. “The IT Solution had to be deployed – in less than a month – as a dynamic, secure and reliable event network that integrated all 12 World Cup stadiums into one unit. At FIFA, we relied upon our Official IT Partners to help us successfully manage what is effectively 12 simultaneous large-scale implementation projects.”