Satyam scores FIFA contracts

Stephen Withers
Wednesday, 01 August 2007 07:48

IT Industry - Deals

FIFA has picked Satyam to develop an event management system plus an intranet/extranet for the world football (soccer) body.

The work will be based at FIFA's Zurich headquarters, but parts of the projects will be carried out at various locations in other countries for "lower costs and optimised CMM Level 5 quality" according to company officials.

"Clearly, FIFA organises incredibly large-scale, high-profile tournaments. In fact, we host the world’s most widely viewed sporting events, with as many as 28 billion people watching the 2006 tournament. As such, we cannot afford even a second's downtime, even during the huge usage spikes throughout games," said FIFA head of information technology solutions Michael Kelly.

"That is why we have chosen the reliability, flexibility, and reusability of Satyam’s applications. This is the start of a long-term relationship that will see Satyam working closely with FIFA over the next few years."

Previously, IT systems for major sporting events have been the province of companies such as IBM, Lenovo and Unisys.

Keshab Panda, senior vice president, director, and head of Satyam's European operations said "We are delighted to have been chosen to deliver such critical applications for FIFA, and are committed to ensuring the success of managing its event logistics and Extranets/Intranet platforms."