Fifa kicks off World Cup IT preparations

Twelve venues being assessed for technical requirements

World Cup football organiser Fifa will begin a tour of 12 German stadia next month to assess the technical requirements for the 2006 tournament.

IT partner Avaya will work with Fifa to audit each location and build the IT networks that will run staff accreditation, transport and logistic applications during the event, which starts in June.

But because the German Bundesliga football season does not finish until May 2006, Avaya will need to build and test the systems in a Frankfurt laboratory before transferring them to the 12 venues.

‘We have tested or will be testing every single device as part of our stringent procedures,’ said Doug Gardner, managing director of Avaya’s Fifa World Cup programme. ‘Before the tournament starts we need to make sure every voice and data switch is working and that we have minimised every possible issue.’

Fifa’s converged telephony and data network will be particularly important for next year’s World Cup, because, for the first time, business applications will be hosted at a data centre and accessed remotely from each stadium via a secure web portal.

‘The Fifa Organising Committee’s applications are already up and working, and in the coming months we will be running 2002 tournament data over the network to see how it performs,’ said Gardner.

Avaya has already tested computer networks at stadia in Cologne, Frankfurt, Dortmund, Hamburg and Leipzig, which were used for the Confederations Cup football tournament in June (Computing, 24 March).

Fifa also used part of the network for last week’s World Cup Finals draw in Leipzig. The system was used by more than 500 people, including staff who used the databases to accredit some 1,600 TV and print journalists.

‘Everything we learn now will feed into the 2006 Fifa World Cup network, which will be the culmination of our work with Avaya on this project,’ said Mike Kelly, head of IT solutions at Fifa.

‘This is an important technological challenge in its own right, but also helps us to scale our converged communications infrastructure appropriately for the World Cup next summer.’