Thousands of spectators, millions of Web visits—one chance to get it right
One of professional tennis's venerable Grand Slams, the Australian Open is Tennis Australia's most visible, strategically important and valuable asset. Last year it attracted more than half a million spectators courtside, nearly 9.8 million visits to its official Web site and a television audience encompassing 165 countries.
The Australian Open is also an example of a complete e-business on demand solution, ensuring players, fans and media worldwide get what they want, when they want it, in the form of real-time scoring, news, match statistics and more. The backbone of this solution? IBM xSeries servers running Linux, which bolster an infrastructure that can scale up to handle more than 70 times its regular traffic, then scale down once the tournament is over.
A flexible game plan
Thanks to Linux on xSeries, multiple, geographically dispersed server farms can be virtualized as one and used to handle the substantial increase in traffic to the Web site, www.australianopen.com, during the tournament. With Tivoli Management Software monitoring application and platform performance, the system can automatically allocate server capacity and other resources where needed, improving utilization rates and minimizing costs.
The result is a scalable, highly responsive infrastructure that complements Tennis Australia's existing systems without the need for large capital investments in technologies that would be underused once the tournament is over.
Sensing and responding to the action, on demand IBM e-business Hosting Linux Virtual Services also plays a key role in the Australian Open solution, providing on demand server capacity for NetPoll, an online feature that allows fans to express their views of each day's events and results.
Along with WebSphere Business Integration Event Broker software, which enables fast delivery of live scores and other content to users' desktops, and IBM Application Management Services, which provide the site design and graphics, the IBM Linux hosting infrastructure gives tennis fans around the world a virtual seat courtside in Melbourne.
Acing business goals
Freed from complex technologies and onerous investments in permanent infrastructure, Tennis Australia can improve its return on investment and focus on its core business goal—to promote the growth of tennis throughout the Asia Pacific region. What can Linux do for you?
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