eircom puts Irish Greyhound Board on fast track with €1.1m cloud services deal

The three year deal, valued at €1.1m will see eircom provide cloud computing and network services that will help to continue the modernisation of the Irish Greyhound Board through the latest cutting edge technology. This will bring new levels of entertainment and experiences to its customers and greyhound racing followers around the world as well as help further reduce operational costs. The Irish Greyhound Board has reduced operational costs by 45% since 2007 which has largely been driven by innovations in technology usage.

eircom has designed and implemented a cloud computing infrastructure solution, powered by Amazon Web Services, that will enable the Irish Greyhound Board to focus on revenue generating opportunities whilst ensuring high quality services are delivered to customers at much reduced cost.
The investment forms a key part of the Irish Greyhound Board’s five year strategic plan to support the business with a leading edge technology infrastructure that will deliver significant efficiencies to the business and enable it to generate new and growing revenue streams both nationally and internationally. Central to IGB’s overall vision is to leverage new technologies in order to improve the customer experience. IGB recognises that sport is in the business of entertainment and must continually adapt to changing consumer lifestyle trends. The new communications and media platform being put in place for IGB will now ensure that greyhound supporters can access live streaming content both from the race track venues and remotely through multiple electronic devices, including iPads, iPods and Android tablets, in several video formats.

As part of this latest modernisation project, live streaming of races will also be broadcast via the IGB’s website, www.igb.ie where race analysis, interviews, commentary and live discussions will also be provided. eircom’s cloud computing platform will be responsible for the delivery of this vital service that requires total data integrity and security for key content such as race traffic and billing information.

Commenting on the announcement, Adrian Neilan, CEO, the Irish Greyhound Board, said: “We are extremely excited about the world of possibilities that now open up for us with the move to eircom cloud. The new content and revenue-generating services that we can now begin to rollout over the coming three years look set to be a real game-changer for the industry as we seek to realise the potential to further grow and engage with our community of greyhound racing followers, not only in Ireland but also internationally.”

He continued: “We are delighted to partner with eircom Business in this strategic project. The ability of eircom’s network to carry voice, video and data over a single IP network, fully integrated with its flexible and cost effective cloud offering, were key factors in our selection criteria as we seek to further advance our business.”

Jason O’Conaill, Head of Cloud and Data Centres, eircom Business, said: “The association with eircom Business will make a real difference for the Irish Greyhound Board as it sets out to expand its business. The partnership that we have in place with Amazon Web Services, along with the significant investments that we have made in our cloud capabilities, can now truly enable businesses to transform their legacy IT infrastructures to become more agile and deliver savings in operating costs.”