FIFA picks EDS for its World Cup 98 team

In the 1990s, organising the IT systems for a major sporting event is still a task fraught with danger. Just ask IBM.
Everyone knows that IBM was the prime supplier of IT systems for the Atlanta Olympics last year, because the Atlanta Olympic Committee was so heavily criticised for its lack of organisation. The press ripped into the systems that were supposed to provide them with up-to-the-minute information on events, competitors and results.
Steve Perrin, EDS' head of development systems for football's World Cup in France next year, knows the dangers. 'In this business you are never as good as your good reviews and never as bad as your bad ones,' he says. 'IBM had to take a lot of criticism, but I don't think things were that bad.' Perrin has been working on site at the office of the CFO, organisers of France 98, for the last two years. Before that, he worked on the media information system that EDS supplied for World Cup 1994 in the USA.
'If the systems work well, nobody notices,' he says. But behind the scenes things can go badly wrong. 'On the very first day of USA 94, our main server went down - just like that,' Perrin recounts. 'The hot standby cut straight in and no-one noticed. But that shakes you up.'
Perrin is working with a partnership of suppliers: Hewlett-Packard for the hardware (there will be 20,000 terminals up and running); Sybase for the database technology and development tools; and France Telecom for the wide-area network that will link 10 sports arenas to the CFO headquarters in Paris and the international press centre in Versailles. EDS is providing the development manpower and the systems integration skills.
The CFO's IT budget is FF250m (#25m) for a complex system containing some 20 LANs and corresponding groups of servers that will be dismantled when the event is over. The WAN will stay.
Perrin has the luxury of knowing that at least some of his systems have already been tested in the heat of battle. In March last year, tickets went on sale for the first time in France. In all, 1.7 million tickets were sold, either via telephone or a system that the EDS team developed for France's Minitel network.
One major problem facing Perrin's team was that the stadia, including the main stadium, Le Stade de France, were still under construction. So the ticketing system had to be linked to a CAD system that showed their eventual layout. The ticketing system is part of Score, EDS' main World Cup systems, which has four other modules. These are:
Accreditation, which will provide photo- identity cards for about 100,000 people, including 20,000 volunteer workers, 9,000 journalists, the players, officials and everybody else involved in the World Cup circus.
Recruitment and human resources.
Guest services, which tracks VIPs and their special needs.
Accommodation, which tracks hotel and housing information for players, VIPs, media and staff.
The other major system is World Cup On-Line, the information system for media, staff and the general public. This will be loaded with all the data on the World Cup, the organisation, history, logistics and crucial game information, including running commentary on the game and the final match analyses.
It has two modules: the media and VIP information system, and a Web site which is accessible by the general public. You can check out the site at www.france98.com.
Apart from the archive data, which is being loaded now, and all the detail on the teams which will be loaded early next year once the final qualification is completed, the most important module will be the online information service that feeds details of games as they happen. For this, two volunteers at each venue will feed information into laptops, one being specifically assigned to feeding in the numerics on goals, fouls and offsides.
But in comparison with USA 94, there will be relatively few statistics. 'We were criticised for providing too many,' says Perrin, adding defensively: 'But hey - we're Americans. We were trying to make it like baseball. This time it will be simpler.'
The second person in the booth will handle five keys on the keyboard for the entire 90 minutes. One key is pressed when team A has the ball in its half, another when the ball is in the opposition half. Team B's possession is covered by two more keys, and the fifth is for when the ball goes out of play.
The result of what must be the most boring job in the World Cup is one of those handy charts which show who had the most possession and who had territorial advantage.
All round, EDS seems ready for next year's tournament of spills, thrills, tears and joy. Perrin hopes that EDS will be a little better known by the public by the end of it. But he certainly does not want to make the company infamous - a la IBM at Atlanta - overnight.

Three hours to kick-off? Disaster strikes
'Three hours before a game at Stanford at USA 94, a refuse truck came by with its hydraulic arms extended and took out the bridge between the media centre and the stadium - and our network with it,' says Perrin.
'We got some wireless repeaters to get it back up in time for the game. Sometimes the most important piece of high technology is a motorbike.'