Liverpool Football Club and IBM i

We’re preparing for an announcement next week, so I haven’t blogged as much as I would like, but I wanted to share one of the customer references I talked about last time. If you’ll recall, I mentioned that while many clients do not allow us to mention their names, there are also many who are happy to share their story. Today I’ll spotlight someone from the other side of the Atlantic: the Liverpool Football Club.

Like many of our clients, no matter what the industry, the Liverpool Football Club wants to do a great job for their customers. Their need from the IT solution they buy: Liverpool FC aims to provide the best possible football experience for its supporters and recognized that online ticket sales were a key part of its interaction with its fans. The club decided to review its ticketing platform and create a roadmap for future development.

From more than 20 vendors, the club selected IRIS Ticketing, its incumbent supplier, to deliver a program of enhancements for the TALENT Sport ticketing system. IRIS Ticketing focused on transforming the fans’ experience with a new queuing system, and improved performance by moving the software onto a new IBM Power 720 server.

The team clearly saw benefits from this solution:

1. Increased capacity by 250 percent; the system can now support over 750 concurrent users.
2. Handled 100,000 ticket sales within four days without a single moment of downtime.
3. Queuing system gives supporters a better understanding of the ticketing process, improving customer service and fostering loyalty.

“The upgrade has at least doubled our capacity on the TALENT Sport system, and may even have tripled it.”

— Phil Dutton, Head of Ticketing and Hospitality at Liverpool FC

As is clear by this example, we reach many of our IBM i customers because of the excellent solutions that continue to be invested in and enhanced by ISVs such as IRIS Ticketing. It’s this focus on a customer solution that runs the business reliably, with high performance as well as fit-for-purpose functionality, that remains a winner.

So, whether you’re a fan of Liverpool FC or not, did you know that they use IBM i and Power Systems for their business? Now you do. That’s an example of IBM i in your world.