Satyam scores World Cup deal
Satyam Computer Services has sealed a "multimillion-dollar, multiyear" deal with the Federation International Football Association (FIFA) to develop its intranet and extranet systems, as well as a customized event management for the upcoming World Cup in 2010.
In a phone interview with ZDNet Asia Thursday, India-based Mohan Srinivasan, leader for business consulting at Satyam, said the IT services provider currently has "three engagements" with FIFA.
"We are working on their extranet, the intranet and the event management system, leading up to the World Cup in 2010," Srinivasan added, noting that conceptualization of the project started about "a year and half ago".
The partnership with FIFA started around January this year, and work on the event management system began some three months back, he said. This was followed by implementation work on the intranet and more recently, the extranet, he added.
Srinivasan added that components for the event management system will be built over the next three years, based on FIFA's requests, and will consist of at least seven to eight business modules.
The event management system will be used "to internally manage their events, right from visitor tracking…[to the allocation of] seats, ticketing and hospitality".
According to a Satyam media statement, the Indian IT services giant will "provide in-country support for matches, working primarily from FIFA's Zurich headquarters". In addition, Satyam will also have teams working from offshore locations to "enable lower costs and optimized CMM Level 5 quality".
"A considerable part of the team is based out of India, but the key architects and the program and project managers are based out of Switzerland," Srinivasan explained, adding that it will also leverage its operations in the Asia-Pacific region, such as China, Singapore and Malaysia, for the projects.
"FIFA organizes incredibly large-scale, high-profile tournaments…with as many as 28 billion people watching the 2006 Tournament," Michael Kelly, FIFA head of information technology solutions, said in a statement. "As such, we cannot afford even a second's downtime, even during the huge usage spikes throughout games."
"That is why we have chosen the reliability, flexibility and reusability of Satyam's applications," Kelly said.