---------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Florida SunFlash World Cup 1994 Wrap Up SunFLASH Vol 70 #14 October 1994 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Electronic Journal For Sun Users Since 1988 John J. Mclaughlin, Publisher & Editor - flash@sun.com ____________________________________________________________________________ 70.14 World Cup 1994 Wrap Up World Cup USA 1994, Inc., and Sun Microsystems, Inc., presented a wrap-up of how the breakthrough information technology performed at this year's international sporting event. A network of 1,100 Sun(R) workstations and 22 Sun servers, distributed across nine U.S. cities during the four-week-long event from June 17 to July 17, were used for mission-critical event management functions such as media systems, game results, security, accreditation and logistics. (147 lines) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Contact: Larry Lettieri of SMCC public relations at (415) 336-6117 WORLD CUP USA 1994 AND SUN MICROSYSTEMS DELIVER WORLD CUP WRAP UP "The World Cup USA 1994 mission was to stage the most technologically successful World Cup in history and we far exceeded our goal," said Che Che Vidal, vice president of technology, World Cup USA 1994. "One of our biggest technical challenges was to develop a system in less than nine months that could support a virtual Fortune 200 company while staging the largest single sporting event in the world. And we accomplished this without any significant failures. Our experience illustrates that client-server technology is the ideal solution for all kinds of businesses that require a high performance distributed computing environment." Accreditation System More than 110,000 badges were issued at the World Cup games, surpassing the estimated 50,000. Badges were issued to 10,000 members of the media, 15,000 volunteers, 30,000 contractors and some 55,000 suppliers, players and FIFA (Federation International de Football Association) members. "The accreditation system had the first-ever video imaging system networked nationwide," said Bill Alaoglu, director of technology at World Cup. "This system was critical to our security programs and helped us run a successful and trouble-free event." World Cup News Service (WCNS) World Cup News Service (WCNS), the event's premiere application, set a new standard in delivering media services at sporting events. For the first time, the service allowed users to query the FIFA database for historical soccer data, player biographies, photographs and other relevant statistical information. Inquires for information on the WCNS network ranged from 60,000 to 80,000 per day. According to Chalese Stachowiak, Dallas Venue Press Officer, the greatest single item used in the press office during the World Cup was the WCNS. "The technology behind WCNS was remarkable and made my job so much easier. Gone are the days of manual statistics, bulky media guides and mass faxing of information. Once reporters discovered WCNS, they would not get off the terminal," said Stachowiak. First Ever Video-On-Demand Network The World Cup USA 1994 interactive multimedia kiosks set a new level of expectations for the use of computers at sporting events. The kiosks delivered high-quality, video-on-demand highlights of World Cup action within two hours after the games were completed at sites across the United States. "This successful multimedia installation was the first ever to use ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) technology at a sporting event," said Dr. Norm Koo, director of the technical office, Sun Microsystems, Inc. "Of the many applications used during World Cup USA 1994, the delivery of highlight video-on-demand to the various venues was our crowning technological achievement." To accomplish this breakthrough, cooperation was required from the three official technology partners, Sun, EDS, SPRINT as well as other World Cup suppliers. Sun provided a workstation-based ATM card while Synoptics, Inc. provided a Lattis-Cell ATM hub. Parallax Graphics provided the Parallax Power(TM) video display card and Paradise Software provided Uniflix video servers. In order to get the video highlights distributed around the country as quickly as possible, SPRINT designed a new service called fractional T3. This fully fiber optic service allowed the technology partners to choose the transmission speeds needed for each individual venue. EDS developed a graphical user interface based on Sybase's Gain Interactive Development Environment(TM) that allowed video highlights to be integrated into the World Cup News Service. Internet Access To World Cup Information Internet subscribers also had access to World Cup data and related event information during the games. World Cup USA 1994 established World Wide Web (WWW) servers in the United States, Japan, Norway and the United Kingdom using Sun Internet server technology. This allowed WWW Internet subscribers to obtain the latest results, standings and event information. Mosaic(TM), a graphical tool developed by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), enabled WWW Internet subscribers to view video, audio and graphical pictures. "Our Mosaic Internet WWW servers for the World Cup were a smashing success," said Phil Parkman, group manager for product marketing, Sun Microsystems Computer Company. "A total of over 5 million inquiries were made to our host servers worldwide in a little more than a month. Now that the games are over, we are helping our customers use Mosaic technology to get their information archives out to the public." Future Plans On October 6, 1994, FIFA will hold a meeting in Zurich, Switzerland, to determine how the World Cup USA 1994 information will be used in the future. "We have 16 gigabytes of data including the video highlights residing on legacy systems installed in Zurich," said Che Che Vidal. "Steps are being taken to structure a service for future use." Sun Microsystems Computer Company (SMCC), the world's top supplier of open network computing solutions, is a division of Sun Microsystems, Inc. Built on Sun's legacy of "The Network is the Computer(TM)," SMCC's SPARC(R)/Solaris(R) workstation and server family leads the UNIX market. The company has its headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. # # # (C)1994 Sun Microsystems, Inc. Sun, the Sun logo, Sun Microsystems, The Network is the Computer and Solaris are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. All SPARC trademarks, including the SCD Compliant logo, are trademarks or registered trademarks of SPARC International, Inc. Products bearing SPARC trademarks are based on an architecture developed by Sun Microsystems, Inc. All other product or service names mentioned herein are trademarks of their respective owners. Press announcements and other information about Sun Microsystems are available on the Internet via the World Wide Web. URL http://www.sun.com