The Giants' use of technology on so many fronts has established them as a standard among Major League Baseball franchises, says Al DeBord, technology coordinator for the St. Louis Cardinals. DeBord is up to his eyeballs in IT initiatives as the club prepares to open its new stadium for the 2006 season. He's hoping to have a wireless network that extends to all of the ballpark after seeing the impact it's having at SBC. And he's also considering pursuing a ticket-distribution model similar to the Giants' arrangement with Tickets.com, which he says is influencing how ticketing is handled by many other teams. The Cardinals currently run their ticket system internally on an AS/400 mainframe, and DeBord says that any new system--whether internal or outsourced--will have to be in place before the 2005 seasons so it can run for a year before being used at the new stadium. It's that time crunch that has made the Giants' model look especially attractive. Adds DeBord, "The advantages of going with the outside vendor is that you gain two years of development overnight."
Subsea cable alternatives can provide a level of comfort for those concerned about disruptions. Realistically, they will continue to play a small, but critical role in the short term.
Maintaining existing network infrastructures often incurs huge technical debt before newer technologies are adopted over time.
Amid ongoing regional uncertainties, telecom infrastructure in the Middle East has expand to include terrestrial low-latency network infrastructure, which offers resilience and agility in navigating political complexities without relying solely on undersea networks.
