Pure Storage CTO, John Colgrove, and Collingwood FC Performance Analysis Manager, Ash Collins
Pure Storage and its platinum partner, Harbour IT, have together deployed a solution for the Australian Football League (AFL) club, Collingwood Football Club (FC).
The arrangement sees the cloud and managed services partner install Pure Storage’s data platform to put the club’s data to work, on and off the field.
Collingwood FC aims to use this solution to increase the speed at which it accesses data — from kicks to marks, handballs and even past game highlights during the game — to gain insights and help them win on the day.
Specifically, Collingwood FC is using Pure Storage’s FlashArray//M system, in a VMware vSphere environment, to deliver intelligence by analysing big data loads collected around player fitness and performance.
Before deploying FlashArray//M, Collingwood FC had to prune data it wished to keep online, due to the low capacity of its legacy system.
Today, the club is able to analyse player information provided by its analytics partner, Champion Data, in real-time to aid the coach in decision making.
This deployment will enable Collingwood FC to quickly create custom reports for each area coach after every match, for player performance improvement and outlining the game plan for the next game.
Collingwood FC football operations manager, Marcus Wagner, said the deployment will give its team a competitive edge.
“We needed a system that is both robust from a reliability standpoint and flexible, so that we can scale as we grow. Pure Storage ticked all our boxes, offering the best performance and capacity to enable greater productivity across every aspect of our business,” he said.
“More important is the fact that Pure’s solution is almost maintenance-free from a system administration perspective, allowing us to focus our time and efforts on the field.”
Pure Storage A/NZ regional vice-president, Mike Sakalas, said Collingwood FC has recognised the need to adapt its technology to suit the business of sport.
“In the business of sport, speed is everything. As sensors tracking everything from player fitness to field quality become the norm, sporting clubs are challenged with processing large data sets in short timeframes,” he said.
“Working with numerous sports brands including Collingwood FC and Mercedes AMG Petronas Formula One, the team at Pure Storage is particularly passionate about providing clubs and sporting teams with a competitive advantage.”
Pure storage also most recently signed a distribution deal with Dicker Data and teamed up with Optus Business to launch one of Australia’s first All-Flash storage platforms available either on-premise or in the cloud.
