FEATURE: CLOUD SOLUTIONS
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Technology born out
of a World Cup – winning
partnership with the
German football team is
now available to South
African teams.
“SAP Sports One provides team
management, training planning, player
fitness, performance insights, scouting and
penalty insights functionality to some of
the world’s leading high-performance sports
teams,” he said.
“While it was initially designed to support
football teams, Sports One has been
adopted by a range of other sports
disciplines, including rugby, basketball, skiing
and ice hockey.”
Cloud tech driving
on-field performance
S
outh African sports teams have
gained access to the same
technology used by the German
football team in their successful
bid for the 2014 FIFA World Cup at the
launch of SAP Sports One.
SAP Sports One is the first sports-specific
cloud solution powered by SAP’s celebrates
HANA platform. It provides teams and
administrators with a single unified
platform for the efficient management of
teams and players and delivers powerful
analytical insights for performance
optimisation. The solution was born out
of a partnership between SAP and the
German football team. Following the
team’s victory at the 2014 FIFA World
Cup, SAP was heralded as the team’s
‘12th Man’ by the Wall Street Journal and
credited with a significant contribution to
the famous win.
Bernhard Escherich, Global Head of New
Markets and Strategic Customers: Sport and
Entertainment at SAP, says this experience
prompted SAP to expand the scope and
functionality of Sports One and release it as
a single product for sports teams.
Deployed in the cloud, SAP Sports One helps
clubs and organisations digitalise sports
performance management by co-ordinating
all administrative, training and team
management, scouting and medical processes.
“The solution is built on SAP HANA, so data
analysis and processing take place in real time
to equip coaching, medical and administrative
staff with in-the-moment insight into various
performance areas relating to the team or
organisation,” added Escherich. “Most sports
already generate a wealth of data from
video feeds and equipment sensors and
we have partnered with a number of sports
companies to generate player data via their
wearable devices.
“Our platform integrates all the data sources
and enables real-time management of
teams. We have embedded powerful tools to
understand the relationships between data
sets, apply geospatial analysis of data and
present the findings in new and interesting
ways that are relevant to the person
consuming the data. For example, the coach
will have a very different interface when using
Sports One than what the physiotherapist
will experience. This ensures each user gets
Data-driven
sports management
hits South African shores
34
INTELLIGENTCIO
www.intelligentcio.com