BLADE SERVER TECHNOLOGY - HOT TOPIC -
Super Bowl Becomes a BladeCenter® S Showcase

Photo and home page photo credit: NFL.com.

SuperBowl 2009 became a showcase for BladeCenter S IT technology as the 32 NFL teams selected the BladeCenter S to be their foundation IT center for the event.

The 17-member IT staff assigned by the NFL to work in Tampa, Fla., the site of the 2009 Super Bowl, created a complete IT operation for Super Bowl XLIII in a matter of weeks. Led by Joe Manto, the NFL's vice president of IT and Jon Kelly, the league's director of infrastructure computing, the team set up systems to support business operations for about 200 NFL employees on-site in Tampa. It also set up a tech operation at the convention center to support 3,500 media representatives covering the event. Another system managed the credentialing of nearly 25,000 people associated with the event. Finally approximately 300 PCs were networked together.

IBM's sponsorship of the Super Bowl and its direct deal with the NFL to supply IT infrastructure led to a larger deal led by Vicom Computer Services, a Farmingdale, N.Y.-based service provider to install a BladeCenter S chassis for each of the 32 NFL team's IT infrastructures.

The BladeCenter S servers were configured in New York and place into service at the various Tampa locations. The fact that BladeCenter S's run on 120-volt power simplified installation.

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