Arthur was challenging his leadership team to ensure that every decision we made was
going to provide the best possible fan experience.
10 years from now, 15 years from now, 20 years
from now.
This isn't about having the Final Four in
the Super Bowl once.
That's having a relevant stadium that is continued
to be viewed as best in class so that we get
multiple Super Bowls, multiple college football
national championships, that's been the vision
from the beginning.
As we started this pathway toward a new stadium,
we really realized we were going to need a
systems integration partner.
And IBM played that role for us and did a
tremendous job.
We actually built a mockup of the stadium.
In fact, we built three mockups with three
different possible sets of technologies of
the stadium at a facility several miles down
the road from here, where we were able to
take all of the different possible technology
choices, all of the different possible implementations
and visions for that technology and put them
together into a functional hall.
I like to say we've built a future flexible
network and all the technology that we continue
to deploy is built around this notion of being
future flexible and that's exactly the network
that IBM has designed and deployed for us.
I ultimately selected what's called a GPON
or a Gigabit Passive Optical Network.
This is fiber to the edge.
We ran over four thousand miles of fiber optic
cable throughout the venue out to the end points.
We've got over fifteen thousand ethernet ports,
eighteen hundred wi-fi access points, seven
hundred DAS antennas, twenty five hundred
IPTV's, five hundred security cameras, four
hundred active doors controlled by security,
and over seven hundred point of sale units
all connected to this fiber.
IBM built right on site here in the Mercedes-Benz
stadium, what is probably the largest room
outside of the field itself.
A 6,500 square foot DAS head-end room.
The DAS head-end room is where all of the
carriers can bring those antenna systems,
base stations, electronics that connect your
wireless signal to the wired signal of the
internet and telephone network, so that you're
able to connect and post online, call your
friends, whatever you want to do.
What this translates into is amazing bandwidth
capabilities now but also decades into the future.
Then, when we needed to put technology in
our fans hands, we wanted to give them control,
we wanted to give them a companion to help
them make the most of their game day experience.
We were gonna develop apps.
So we sat down and went through a six to ten
week process using IBM design thinking, using
many people from all across the Falcons and
Atlanta United organizations, to really plot
out what that fan experience was going to
be when the stadium opened, and then what
were some of those key ideas that'll allow
us to innovate in future years after the stadium
was open.
IBM's team, the same teams that develop world
class apps for the Master's or for Wimbledon
is the same team that developed our apps for
Atlanta United, for the Falcons, and for the stadium.
Wayfinding in and around the stadium; transportation
to and from the venue; digital ticketing to
smooth out the process of entering the stadium,
and the ability to buy, sell and transfer
tickets; Ask Arthur, which is a Watson integration
that allows the fan to get information about
the stadium or the venue; integration with
Waze and Lift; and placing your order while
you're waiting in line at the concession stand.
So if you're looking for gluten-free food,
vegan food, guest services, first aid.
Do you have changing tables?
Where do I park an RV?
All of those types of things, you can ask and we have answers built in using Watson technology.
When people ask me questions, that's where
I go.
I ask Arthur.
So with the IBM data center, it serves as
sort of the heartbeat for our operations here
from an IT perspective.
Running in that is sort of our critical, game
day, point of sale type applications, video
applications that need to be on-site here.
The IBM data center is our gateway to the
IBM Cloud.
We use the IBM Cloud extensively to run our
most sensitive applications and to ensure
that we're backing up information frequently
to ensure that we've got the resiliency we
need to run events here in this stadium at
all times.
We're pushing over fifty terabytes of data
up to the IBM Cloud for backup on a monthly
basis.
So when I was looking at the different needs
that I had across the technology spectrum,
IBM was the only one that truly thought different
about what we were asking for.
They sought to understand my intent as well
as the long-term vision that we had for the stadium
With IBM's help, we are delivering one of
the best fan experiences in sports and entertainment
anywhere you'll see in the world.
