Motorbike racing legends Ducati Corse have teamed up with EMC Corp., to harness the power of Big Data to try and make their motorbikes go that much faster.
The speed demons said they’ll be using EMC’s Isilon scale-out solution Network-attached Storage (NAS) to help “consolidate, manage and analyze” vital race data such as bike telemetry, engine fluid-dynamics and test archiving. The information will then be accessed and shared using EMC’s syn’n’share solution Syncplicity, which will become the “central point of the approach to Ducati’s data during races”.
Ducati and EMC believe that better access to race data can shave off thousandths of a second out on the tracks during races – that might not seem like much, but considering how every racing superbike travels at more or less the same stupidly super-fast speeds, those thousandths of a second could make all the difference between first and second place.
Marco Fanizzi, CEO of EMC Italy, explained that Big Data analysis was becoming increasingly important in a range of sectors, and sports is chief among them. “By collecting as much data as possible from an increasing number of sources, and then extracting that data in real time, Ducati will be able to increase its agility and gain a real competitive advantage,” he explained.
“We believe that the solutions from EMC will allow us to improve our machines and our approach to the game, helping us to do great things this year,” added Roberto Canè, Electronics Systems Director, Ducati Corse Division.
As part of the deal, EMC will also become one of Ducati’s major sponsors for the next MotoGP and Superbike World Championship campaigns, which means it’ll be able to splash its logo all over their bikes.
Ducati is by no means the first race team to try and leverage Big Data to squeeze out that extra mile. As SiliconANGLE reported last year, Formula 1 Team Sauber is harnessing the power of NetApp’s FlexPod data center solution to suck data from its race cars at a rate of 20-30MB per lap.
Sauber has fitted sensors onto its race machines that tell its engineers everything they need to know about the performance of their cars, giving them up-to-the-minute knowledge about the condition of the car’s tires, its engine status, temperature, fuel usage, brakes, wear and tear, and more. By analyzing this data, Sauber’s engineers can tweak elements of the car design, plan their race strategy and make crucial decisions in real-time as they plot their race tactics and pit stops.
Big Data’s usefulness in sports isn’t limited to the race track either. At the FIFA World Cup in Brazil earlier this summer, it was revealed that Germany’s national soccer team was using SAP’s Match Insight Software to gain an advantage over the opposition. Match Insight provides reams of data that can help coaches to effectively assess key situations in each match, gaining knowledge which can be used to improve player and team performance.
It’s difficult to quantify how useful Match Insight actually was, but it certainly didn’t hurt Germany’s efforts – for the team went on to win the World Cup with a 1-0 extra time victory over Argentina in the final.
