DS Virgin Racing on Track to Win With

Case Study

DS Virgin Racing on track to win with HPE Delivers business-critical services trackside at Objective Deploy and maintain advanced analytics global races and at headquarters to optimize Formula E electric race car performance

Approach Leverage HPE services to drive IT efficiency and support track site implementation, testing, and operations in major cities worldwide

IT Matters • Capture race car performance data trackside for real-time analytics • Support IT environments for the pit crew at race sites and at racing headquarters • Provide a dedicated engineer to support trackside setup, operations, and breakdown

Business Matters • Leverage real-time analytics to improve electric race car performance • Manage portable trackside IT infrastructure DS Virgin Racing is competing in the world’s Harnessing the pioneering spirit of Sir Richard first Formula E electric car championship, Branson and the Virgin Group as well as the • Ensure continuous reliability for business-critical mobile IT infrastructure and capturing and analyzing real-time race automotive expertise of DS Automobiles, the information is key to optimal performance. In DS Virgin Racing Formula E Team exists to an Internet of Things (IoT) implementation, power innovation so it can positively impact the DS Virgin Racing cars are outfitted with people’s lives. DS Virgin Racing is aggressively sensors that track performance, wear, and competing in the Fédération Internationale de what needs to be tuned. This British racing automobile (FIA) Formula E electric-powered team needed powerful analytics infrastructure car races. Formula E is the world’s first global deployed trackside for real-time analytics and electronic vehicle racing championship, and it at headquarters for post-win playback and enables the fast-tracking of the development analytics. By turning to HPE, DS Virgin Racing of electric vehicle technology. It serves as is able to successfully compete in the Formula a showcase for electric vehicles to a mass E championship while continuously improving global audience, and it aligns with the electric vehicle (EV) technology, and these Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) values of improvements will ultimately trickle down for partnership, innovation, and a winning spirit. usage in future electric road cars. Case study Industry Page 2 DS Virgin Racing Sports

“Winning races is our goal, and everything we do is guided by efficiency. HPE has knowledge and experience with the demanding conditions of building and maintaining infrastructure to compete in major sporting events. HPE serves as an important part of our team and provides skills and expertise that support both our trackside and headquarters deployments.”

— Sylvain Filippi, CTO of DS Virgin Racing

All Formula E events begin with two Virgin Racing. “We did not have the internal practice sessions in the morning, an opening resources necessary, and HPE provides 45-minute session followed by a further the technical knowledge and expertise at 30-minute session. Drivers have two cars each race location and at our headquarters each at their disposal with 200 kW of power to manage the systems that power our available. The cars are outfitted with sensors analytics.” that capture IoT data to reveal how the car and engine perform for qualifying and 170 kW Developing, deploying, of electricity for the race. and supporting analytics FIA places strict race pit headcount infrastructure restrictions that allow only 15 people for each team, and this number includes drivers, HPE, the Official IT Partner of DS Virgin mechanics, support staff, and an HPE Racing, designed a complete solution of engineer. DS Virgin Racing needed IoT big hardware, software, and services. HPE data analytics at its UK headquarters to IDOL advanced enterprise search and analyze and improve race car performance, data analytics allow DS Virgin Racing to as well as trackside support for collecting understand the IoT sensor data in real time the data, transmitting it to headquarters, and for information analytics, archiving, discovery, providing feedback to the driver and racing content management, data protection, team. It also needed to augment its resources and marketing optimization. HPE Vertica with technical expertise to support DS Advanced Analytics software allows DS Virgin Racing’s analytic infrastructure in the Virgin Racing to take advantage of advanced racing pit at each major race as well as at its SQL database analytics. DS Virgin Racing headquarters in the UK. also relies on the HPE Moonshot energy- efficient, integrated server system, Aruba DS Virgin Racing relies on HPE Foundation Wireless Networking solutions, and HPE Care service and HPE Proactive Care service 3Par StoreServ 7400 storage infrastructure. to augment internal staff, as well as global Implementing, managing, and operating this support and a dedicated HPE engineer in analytic infrastructure at races in major global the pit of each race. “HPE has the knowledge cities and at headquarters is a daunting and previous sports event IT expertise we challenge, and DS Virgin Racing turned needed,” says Sylvain Filippi, CTO of DS to HPE to support this business-critical infrastructure. Case study Industry Page 3 DS Virgin Racing Sports

Ensuring the reliability of HPE tailored its support to meet the unique needs of DS Virgin Racing by providing a business-critical systems dedicated engineer in the pit for each race who is an expert on servers, storage, and Managing a complex IT environment in networking. HPE also provides global call multiple locations was critical to the goals of management and one place to call to address the operation. Standard support programs any hardware or software issues that may would be insufficient because DS Virgin arise. An HPE remote delivery manager is Racing needed business-critical, multi- responsible for planning the implementation location support. Since the race travels to for each race weekend. The remote delivery major worldwide cities, DS Virgin Racing manager interacts with HPE resources in each needed a business-critical support experience city prior to the team’s arrival, and reviews in each race location—including the ability lessons learned from previous races to ensure to swiftly access spare parts as well as the a best practices approach to continuous ability to support the setup, operations, and improvement. HPE also provides global breakdowns for each race. support so DS Virgin Racing can call if needed With HPE Foundation Care, DS Virgin Racing for local parts and additional local support has access to HPE experts via phone, web, resources. or both. DS Virgin Racing receives problem According to Filippi, “Our support relationship diagnosis and support, replacement parts with HPE gives us onsite support at our and materials, and access to firmware and headquarters and race locations, allowing software updates. HPE Foundation Care us to trust HPE to keep our business-critical provides DS Virgin Racing with one place to infrastructure operational so our team can call for support for both the headquarters concentrate on winning races.” facilities and the constantly changing racing locations, with four-hour spare parts response times at each race site and at headquarters. Implementing global support for race-day operations HPE Proactive Care provides a personalized and proactive hands-on approach for The infrastructure at DS Virgin Racing maintaining an agile, healthy, and reliable headquarters is constantly being optimized to infrastructure. It allows DS Virgin Racing to support high-speed analytics. HPE Proactive connect its HPE hardware platforms to HPE Care help DS Virgin Racing prevent problems to benefit from proactive analysis and faster and stays up-to-date. Products connected troubleshooting, and if DS Virgin Racing calls to HPE leverage 24x7 monitoring, pre-failure in for a support issue a technical solution alerts, rapid diagnosis, and automatic call specialist takes ownership of the issue and logging with parts dispatch for hardware manages the call until the issue is resolved. support. HPE proactively scans the connected HPE provides DS Virgin Racing with tailored devices, provides a healthcheck on them, and proactive reporting with consultations and delivers tailored recommendations to optimize advice that helps DS Virgin Racing manage performance. firmware revisions and any configuration changes while ensuring system stability and reliability. Case study Industry DS Virgin Racing Sports

Customer at a glance Since each race is in a different global city, The onsite engineer carries some spare parts, trackside support is essential. “We need and also coordinates with the local HPE office Services powerful and reliable hardware and software, to access any additional pre-race support • HPE Foundation Care but we also need strong professional services needed and arrange for swift delivery of any • HPE Proactive Care support so we can benefit from advanced required HPE components. “Our HPE onsite Hardware analytics,” states Filippi. “That’s why we engineer knows our systems and has previous • HPE Moonshot System selected HPE as our partner of choice to meet relevant experience,” says Filippi. “I didn’t • HPE 3PAR StoreServ 7400 our unique support requirements.” Each race have the resources to have my team perform takes place on a Saturday, and the DS Virgin the upgrades, configure the equipment, and • Aruba Wireless Networking Switches Racing team—including the dedicated HPE maintain it at each race.” Software engineer—arrives by the previous Thursday. • HPE Vertica Advanced Analytics “The race qualifications, testing, and the DS Virgin Racing will be participating in 11 • HPE IDOL actual race all occur in a single day, so we races by the end of the season, and in up to can’t afford any delays due to IT issues,” 14 next year. “We learn a great deal from each Financial Services Filippi explains. race, and we’ve already built the foundation • HPE Technology Refresh for our analytics,” Filippi says. “Our long-term • HPE Asset Recovery The dedicated HPE engineer installs and tests relationship with HPE allows us to scale our all of the trackside hardware, and connects it analytics to continuously learn more about to HPE for a healthcheck. He also connects to optimizing race cars and the abilities needed the FIA network and runs the HPE analytics to enable the next generation of electric cars. software. The servers, applications, and We’ll be soon ingesting and analyzing video network are fully operational by Friday, which from onboard cameras and race feeds.” can be a challenge in locations with limited wireless access capabilities. On race day, The extracted data will be stored in HPE telemetry information is captured from DS Vertica for search and analysis. “We’ll be able Virgin Racing’s cars, and online feeds provide to manage petabytes of data at massive scale headquarters personnel with information to using blazingly fast analytics,” Filippi states. review race performance. “This will give us the ability to manage large volumes of data in seconds, not weeks.” “Our HPE onsite support engineer is under immense pressure to make sure everything He adds, “HPE helps us improve our race works, and to address any problems within efficiency and run sophisticated simulation seconds,” says Filippi. “Everyone on our race programs so we can analyze and improve team is extremely busy on race day, and our results. Everything we do is guided by efficiency is crucial. We briefly considered efficiency, whether that’s managing our using one of our own engineers at each race, analytics infrastructure, winning the race, or but quickly concluded that we needed a designing next year’s cars. HPE technical focused engineer with the expertise to resolve services manages our analytics infrastructure any issue quickly. If we lose a half hour during so we can focus on winning races and a race due to an IT issue, we’ll finish in the continuously improving our cars.” middle or the back of the pack.” Learn more at www.hpe.com/support/services

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