South African rugby union coach Rassie Erasmus believes technology will play a pivotal role as the Springboks head to the 2019 Rugby World Cup.
Erasmus was speaking in a panel discussion yesterday during the Microsoft Cloud for Africa event.
Microsoft SA is the official cloud partner of the South African Rugby Union (SARU). This follows the launch of Microsoft's two new cloud data centre regions in SA, one in Cape Town and the other in Johannesburg, earlier this month.
Azure is the first of Microsoft's cloud services to be delivered from the new data centres in SA. Office 365 is anticipated to be available by the third quarter of calendar year 2019, while Dynamics 365 is set for the fourth quarter.
The partnership aims to transform the world of rugby by using cloud capabilities to unlock new opportunities for SARU in digital transformation.
The 2019 Rugby World Cup will be the ninth Rugby World Cup, and is to be held in Japan from 20 September to 2 November.
Speaking at the event, Erasmus said the Springboks' long-term goal is to be number one in the world again.
"We want to get back to winning ways against top nations. We want to beat the likes of New Zealand and Australia. In the short-term, we are looking at winning the World Cup, and in the long-term, we want to be consistently at number one."
According to Erasmus, in a test match, there are only a few minutes of actual play on the field. "We use technologies like GPS tracking to measure our performance. We also use simulation software to see what upcoming matches would look like. We use that software to analyse player positions for things like identifying the weakest defender so you can get your best attacker to exploit that.
"After every game, every player gets to know about the stats on how they performed in a game: how many tackles they have made, how many shots they have made and how many kilometres they have run. Technology is helping us to plan better for matches," he said.
Microsoft says the digital revolution has unlocked new opportunities for clubs, leagues and federations to challenge the convention to re-think how sports is played, coached, watched and experienced.
It points out that using the cloud, Microsoft works to help sports organisations like SARU embrace digital transformation, connect with their fans worldwide, provide more personal experiences and improve and create revenue streams.
SA Rugby says it is digitally transforming its business to create value for its fans and partners over the long-term.
It has partnered with Accenture and relies on Azure IAAS, WebApps, WebLogic, Azure Service Bus, Dynamics CRM and an ISV solution, Sitecore, to develop its new platform.
Jurie Roux, CEO of SA Rugby, says: "The partnership with Microsoft will create an opportunity for us to develop innovative solutions to do things that weren't possible previously."
At the event, Microsoft also announced a partnership with cycling team Dimension Data. "Being the new cloud partner for SA Rugby and Team Dimension Data allows these sports organisations to use technology to connect with fans, improve their services, establish new revenue streams, and more," says Asif Valley, national technology officer at Microsoft.
The partnership with Dimension Data cycling will see Office365 being used by Team Dimension Data as the collaboration platform across all roles in the team, which is central to managing the team both locally and abroad through its highly mobile team.
"As an organisation that races around 280 days in a calendar year on six continents and employs nearly 80 riders and staff scattered around the world, Office365 is the perfect platform with which to manage our truly global team," says Douglas Ryder, team principle at Team Dimension Data.
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