SailGP partners with Cognizant and Oracle in digital arms race

The elite global sailing championship Sail Grand Prix (SailGP), presented by KPMG and hosted in Sydney Harbour over the weekend was a digital arms race, with technology underpinned by digital transformation partner Cognizant and cloud partner Oracle.

In a multi-year partnership, Cognizant is assisting in improving SailGP’s audience insights, enabling data visualisation and creating a better user experience for the race’s 257 million fans.

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This included an overhaul of SailGP’s website and enhancements to its mobile app to provide real time updates on key performance metrics including the speed and distance of the boats.

Cognizant also claims to align with SailGP’s purpose-driven agenda, where its ‘race for the future’ initiative aims to make SailGP the world’s most sustainable and purpose-driven sports and entertainment platform. The race is already climate positive and by 2025 aims to reduce its carbon emissions generated by 55 per cent.

Sir Russell Coutts, CEO, SailGP said, “Cognizant will actively participate in SailGP’s development and our Race for the Future purpose-led agenda, aimed at accelerating change to a cleaner and more inclusive future.”

According to Ursula Morgenstern, president of Cognizant Global Growth Markets, “Many of our clients are sailing enthusiasts. It is an honour to align with an organisation that has demonstrated similar growth and is committed to a sustainable future, as well as diversity and inclusion.”

A Cognizant spokesperson has referred to the fleet of identical hydro foiling F50 catamarans as a “smart city on water” with its suite of IoT devices on board the boats generating 30,000 data points per second to “inform decisions, improve performance and, ultimately, make the boats go faster.”

Oracle’s cloud infrastructure powered the data platform SailGP Insights — an online dashboard providing fans with in depth data while watching the race. This included information on the boat’s position, time, current leg, speed and key indicators from the athletes, as well as the direction and speed of the wind.

According to Warren Jones, Chief Technology Officer at SailGP, “With the power of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and particularly Oracle Stream Analytics, SailGP can stream millions of real-time data requests from each F50 and create insights that give a perspective of the data a SailGP team would be using.”

Scott Newman, Vice President of Cloud Engineering, Australia and New Zealand at Oracle said, “SailGP Insights harnesses thousands of data points instantaneously to give fans an immersive and unrivalled experience.”

“It's a great demonstration of the power and performance of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, and we are proud to have SailGP unveil it for the iconic Sydney Harbour event.”