Lightning and rain are probably the worst enemies of the golfer, which means golf courses and clouds have never been the best of friends. It is a wonderful irony, then, that cloud computing is coming to the rescue of professional golf as it finds its way out of the COVID-19 lockdowns.
The PGA European Tour has revealed that it is roping in new technology from Hewlett Packard Enterprise company Aruba, called ESP. No, not telepathy, although it feels that way. It stands for Edge Services Platform, and is described as “the industry’s first AI-powered, cloud-native platform that predicts and resolves problems at the network edge before they happen”.
Launched, appropriately, during an online media event this week, Aruba ESP is an automated platform that continuously analyses data, identifies anomalies and optimises itself, in order to deliver a cloud experience at the edge of the network.
What does this tech-speak mean in practise?
For large enterprises, which generate massive amounts of data via both people and things connected to the network, instant analysis of the data can be used to improve efficiencies, enhance experiences and enable new business outcomes.
“The key to turning these real-time insights into meaningful actions is to analyse and process this data at the point of origin – the edge – where people, devices and things connect to the digital world,” says Aruba. “This ability to generate actionable insights based on data is especially pertinent today during this unprecedented time in history where businesses, employees and, subsequently, the corporate network must adapt to rapidly evolving business and workplace needs.”
It turns out that a golf tournament is not very different to a corporate workplace – and that a golf course is quite compatible with cloud computing.
“The whole principle of ESP is very exciting and totally aligns with our thoughts,” says Michael Cole, chief technology officer of the PGA European Tour. “For CTOs like myself involved in the sport industry right now, these are indeed challenging times. Nobody wished for this period. However, It has created a moment of opportunity for accelerated innovation, and for the technology industry to rise to this challenge, with enhanced security protection for the organisation, health protection bubbles for our venues, automated no-contact operations, and remote broadcast production techniques.
“While we are preparing for the new normal, this is a moment in time for technology to bring people in sports together in the safest of environments and to set a new vision for the future. This needn’t be a pause. It’s an enhanced approach to a new chapter in digital transformation.”
That
term refers to the digitalisation of all processes used to run an
organisation or industry. Typically, it allows companies to do far more
with their data, and to do it far more quickly. Cole has an unusual
perspective on this potential.
“It’s human nature to
talk about more. But I’m going to focus on the word ‘less’. In this new
world, where health and safety is paramount, we need to minimise all
physical interactions with social distance, while our tournaments are
being played out as close to normality as possible. So we need to create
or accelerate contactless approaches and to create a safe bubble
environment.
“These concepts have always been on our
strategic roadmap, but now the timeline and the importance changes. I’m
driving us towards a mobile-first approach, and that really important
edge processing, at all our venues.”
The venues are one
thing. What about support staff and players? And how does a global sport
adapt to a world in which every country is imposing new rules and
shifting the course as they go?
“It remains a work in
progress,” says Cole. “Our greatest asset is also one of our greatest
challenges: we are a global player, and therefore we have to work with
governments around the world in terms of resetting and rescheduling our
return to the sport.
“For our tournaments, we’re
upgrading our CCTV cameras to undertake thermal protection as part of
our proactive position on early symptom checking of COVID-19 – both for
single person detection and also for larger crowds as we as we scale up.
“We’re deploying contactless sanitisers across the
courses. Given the unique challenge of building overlays across a really
large sporting venue, such as a golf course, we have selected Internet
of Things (IoT) devices to ensure that we can monitor and manage those
sanitizers, particularly the gel levels on every unit. This is very much
part of our vision for a smart course environment.”
Interaction
with the media will also change dramatically. In the early events,
numbers of media will be heavily restricted on site and, as with
football, some activity will be “BCD”, for “behind closed doors”.
Virtual press interviews will become a norm.
“It’s a
necessity for the short term, but we hope it’s a strong legacy for the
longer term, providing optionality in our world for journalists to have
the choice of either physically attending tournaments, or accessing a
range of digitalised media facilities.”
Finally, the golfers themselves will find themselves in a changed world.
“We
have a key focus on our players and ensuring that the bubble concept
protects them from COVID-19. We are going to create a contactless
environment by digitising as much as we can for players. Things like
on-course registration, course layouts, yardage books, their tee times,
how they book their practice slots on the course, getting access to the
driving range, will all be done online , all very much geared to
minimising interaction with our staff, and maintaining that
all-important social distance environment on the course.”
Cole
told us that the PGA European Tour had fully consulted with players on
health strategy, via a tournament committee that is chaired by a former
golf professional and includes player representatives, as well as a
chief medical advisor who specialises in pandemics.
“Our
players have been very supportive of the approach. They just wanted to
get back to play in their sport again, so they are fully accepting of
the plans that we’ve put in place.”
Ultimately, the
readiness of golf to return is a factor of golf having been ready all
along, thanks to the use of technology. Where most cloud computing
operations tend to be labelled “software-as-a-service”, the PGA has
embraced “tournament-as-a-service”.
Says Cole: “Never
before has the importance of planning and ensuring readiness been so
apparent as during this COVID-19 pandemic. When we set out on our
strategy to migrate to an agile and cloud-based environment over two
years ago when I came on board the PGA European Tour, this was critical
for us.
“Now we’re delivering from the cloud, we’re
minimising people, we’re driving efficiency, and we’re maximising
processes to the very edge, to drive intelligence and insight where it
absolutely matters: on the course.”
· Arthur Goldstuck is
founder of World Wide Worx and editor-in-chief of Gadget.co.za. Follow
him on Twitter and Instagram on @art2gee
