CA, one of the world's largest IT management software companies today announced that Arsenal FC has purchased and is implementing CA’s IT management software as it looks to its IT infrastructure to support the transformation of the club into a global business operation, as signaled by the move to the Emirates Stadium.
At the heart of the new 60,000 seat stadium, which opened in July 2006, is a suite of new hospitality, entertainment and ticketing systems that control everything from the entrance turnstiles to the video replays in the executive boxes. These new systems are more complex and sophisticated than anything in place previously at Highbury and therefore need to be managed proactively before they impact upon service. For example, Arsenal FC has gone from using 20 servers at Highbury to 60 servers in the Emirates Stadium, and 500 networked EPOS devices compared to 25 at Highbury. The performance and reliability of these systems is absolutely crucial to Arsenal’s commercial business.
Speaking on the new venture Ned Jaroudi, CA’s Dubai-based Vice President, Area Marketing for EMEA Eastern Markets said, “Arsenal FC is one of the leading English clubs which has enjoyed a long relationship with CA. We see our solutions as fundamental to supporting their business transformation by enabling the monitoring of a whole range of premium facilities and state of the art devices.”
He added, “Sporting clubs and associations worldwide have gone beyond the traditional outlook and are now deploying sophisticated IT software to enhance their performance. With CA’s IT management software, we can identify problems before they result in a loss of service, or in the extreme where a failure occurs, react quickly to either resolve the issue or revert to our backup system”
The products Arsenal FC has recently purchased are Unicenter® Network and Systems Management, Unicenter® Service Level Management and Unicenter® Management Portal. This software will enable Arsenal to monitor and analyse its IT performance and provide greater management information about its IT infrastructure. In addition Arsenal FC already has a number of CA products installed, all with the objective of improving the reliability and availability of its infrastructure and mission critical data, and to ensure it remains secure across the 200 plus user base. These products include Unicenter® Asset Management and CA Message Manager for email management.
More fundamentally this technology enables IT to deliver in line with the business objectives of Arsenal FC. “Arsenal has more than a hundred years of football tradition combined with very modern ambitions to build the club into a financial powerhouse,” said Adrian Ford, Commercial Director, Arsenal FC. “Football is still very much about what happens on the pitch but the modern football ecosystem also requires commercial success to enable the investment that ensures sustained sporting achievement. To achieve that commercial success we need to put the infrastructure in place to support our ambitions, which includes IT.”
© 2007 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
