A new global sailing league featuring the world's fastest, most technologically advanced catamarans is revealing new insights into how enterprises can use big data to become more competitive.
SailGP, comprising five grand prix events and six national teams on identical F50 vessels, is pushing the boundaries of how fast wind power alone can propel a boat - and how data analytics can be used to fine-tune performance.
This week, during the Cowes Week sailing regatta near Southampton, England, the Australian team won the fourth SailGP grand prix. However, during practice the previous week, team Great Britain became the first ever to break the 50-knot speed barrier for a 50-foot boat. That's more than 90km/h. In the following days, both the Australian and Japanese boats broke that record.
The speeds inched ever higher despite the boats sharing the same basic design. The secret to breaking records lay in the athleticism of the crews - and their ability to leverage data.
"Each catamaran is a data-generating machine," said John Abel, vice-president of cloud and technology at Oracle for the UK, Ireland and Israel. The company is both a sponsor of SailGP and provides cloud services for data processing and analysis. "During the race, 1,200 sensors attached to boat parts as well as crew members stream up to 45Mbit of data to an Oracle Exadata machine onshore. From there the data is uploaded to the Oracle Cloud for analysis and distribution.
"This data serves many valuable functions. It is streamed and visualised to the sailing teams, giving them real-time, valuable insight into the conditions in which they are sailing. With information on wind speed, wave height and crew heart rates and vital signs, the teams can adjust their techniques and tactics to improve performance.
"The data is also helping to transform the audience experience. Fans are able to access a rich feed of information. Broadcasters have equal access to the data and use it in their on-screen graphics and analysis."
The CEO of SailGP, Sir Russell Coutts, an Olympic sailing gold medallist and five-time America's Cup winner, told a media briefing that the intelligence available meant that what once took 12 months to learn could now be achieved in an afternoon of practice and analysis.
"There's always an unexpected benefit," he said. "For our media products and mobile app, we can give the fans a much better experience, allowing them to understand why one team is outperforming another. In the past, it was a difficult sport to understand, but this makes it much more understandable and exciting for a
non-sailor."
Said Abel: "SailGP encapsulates the power of data in enterprise. On the day, each team faces the unpredictability of nature in the same way businesses face the vast complexity of the market. Yet data helps them to make sense of the challenges they face. It's then up to the teams to utilise this data to its fullest, making the decisions that will help them win."
• Goldstuck is founder of World Wide Worx and editor-in-chief of Gadget.co.za. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram on @art2gee
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