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Technology has turned a dream into reality for the millions of football fans who will be unable to attend the World Cup in France this year.

 The 1998 World Cup will not be just another football event as computer giant Hewlett-Packard, software supplier Sybase, information provider EDS and France Telecom have worked to turn it into a 'virtual corporation', establishing the largest Web implementation in the world.

 The system will help register and schedule 15,000 volunteers and 500 full-time staff, tracking and issuing accreditation for 50,000 VIPs and 10,000 media representatives.

 More than 2,000 PCs and 100 servers will be used in the World Cup network for applications ranging from Web sites to ticketing.

 France Telecom also has engineered high-speed digital lines between its central Paris location and each venue to help in the mass operation.

 The most expensive part of the project lies in building its infrastructure and developing the application, rather than maintaining it.

 The Federation Internationale de Football Association has an IT budget of about US$40 million, but the exact cost is unknown.

 The backbone of this massive sporting venture, which occurs every four years, rests on HP's management infrastructure.

 The event promises to draw 2.5 million spectators and further hundreds of millions of television viewers around the world.

 Never has a Web site of this capacity been created for a sports event of this scale. The 1998 World Cup will attract twice the number of television viewers as the Olympic Games in Atlanta.

 It will involve 32 teams in 64 matches, playing in venues spread across 10 French cities from Paris to Marseille.

 Sybase Hong Kong general manager Horace Chow said: 'This is not purely a sports event. It is more like running an on-line business as it incorporates the financial side, material control and human resources.

 'It is actually a very serious business, and we will form the backbone of the event.'  Mr Chow said the Web site would encompass technological hardware platforms, telecommunications and networking systems.

 'This is a big challenge, as it means we need to be on time, come June 10.

 'We need to deliver an information system which will run perfectly from the first day, and all information needs to be on real-time schedule.'  A dramatic surge of Internet users has encouraged efforts to expand the World Cup Web site this year.

 'There wasn't a demand for such a site to be created for the 1994 World Cup as at that time there were less than five million Web users and the Web was not nearly as much a part of daily life as it is now.' Raj Dala, Hewlett-Packard's electronic business program manager, said.

 'There are now an estimated 50 to 70 million users. The Web is much more accessible to people than before and this, in turn, has driven a larger demand to create a more advanced Web implementation,' Mr Dala said.

 The information management infrastructure is designed to handle 150 million hits per day and will deal with game scoring, media centres, personnel accreditation, security and hotel information, as well as ticketing, stadium, warehouse and back-office operations.

 To support the high volume of requests, a central HP server running HP-UX was outfitted with the Sybase adaptive server.

 This guard system can survive a complete failure of any system as it will switch, without interruption, to a fully separate server system.

 The network's architecture is strengthened by the replication server which moves only new and updated information rapidly to the 10 venues and Web centres, minimising the possibility of corrupted data caused by an overloaded machine or network.

 Each replicated Web content system also is effectively isolated, eliminating the chance of upstream data sources being affected.

 Working closely with EDS, a Texas-based global information server, France Telecom and Sybase, the Web site is being powered by HP Domain Internet solutions at mirror sites in Texas and Paris.

 The whole World Cup network runs on HP Unix servers and Windows NT computers, ensuring the smooth running of the application on multiple platforms.

 From the stadiums, volunteers will operate laptop computers running on 'Results', an EDS-designed Sybase Powerbuilder application which will capture and send immediately game scores and statistics via the Sybase replication server to the main data centre's adaptive server enterprise database.

 As never before, Web surfers will have access to the latest information as though they were there themselves. The site (http://www.france98.com) is up and running.



Firms team up to create largest Web site for soccer extravaganza in France