OL Groupe, which operates French Ligue 1 football club Olympique Lyonnais and Groupama Stadium, has signed a new partnership with technology company Hewlett Packard Enterprise to support its energy efficiency plan and improve the fan experience at its venues.
OL Groupe has selected the HPE GreenLake edge-to-cloud platform to modernise its entire on-premises infrastructure. The agreement will allow OL Groupe to increase its ability to deploy IT sources, reduce its environmental footprint and accelerate the development of its new entertainment offerings.
The deal has been signed as OL Groupe prepares to open the new 16,000-capacity LDLC Arena (pictured) in Lyon later this year. The venue will be the largest indoor arena in France outside of Paris and is expected to host between 100 and 120 events per year, including LDLC ASVEL basketball games, futsal, tennis, esports and music concerts.
OL Groupe has used HPE and its partner Cheops Technology to provide integration and managed services, and design and deploy an on-premises technology platform distributed over two data centres hosted within Groupama Stadium.
The main aims of the platform are to ensure year-round business continuity through a rapid disaster recovery solution, improve visitor safety in the stadium, improve performance to support the development of OL Groupe activities, and control its environmental impact. The platform will be used during the operation phase of the LDLC Arena.
HPE said its solution has enabled OL Groupe to reduce the energy cost of its IT structure by nearly 50% and is helping it to achieve its objective of reducing its energy footprint by 20% each year.
Emmanuelle Sarrabay, deputy director general for finance and information systems and corporate legal affairs at OL Groupe, said: “The continuation of our collaboration with HPE allows us to fully enter the concrete phase of our energy efficiency plan, with the objective of reducing our energy consumption by 20% while guaranteeing the continuation of our sports and entertainment activities.
“The challenge is to deliver the best service and an optimised fan experience and we have full confidence in HPE’s teams to help us achieve our goals with their expertise.”
Alain Melon, general manager of HPE in France, added: “We are very proud of the choice made by Olympique Lyonnais to modernise its technology environment and commit to the environment with HPE technologies.
“Our HPE GreenLake platform provides Olympique Lyonnais with a scalable and flexible infrastructure capable of meeting the group’s future technology needs to continue to deliver an exceptional experience to its fans and visitors.”
In December, US technology entrepreneur John Textor, through his holding company Eagle Football Holdings, completed his takeover of Lyon. Eagle Football now holds 77.49% of the share capital of OL Groupe on a non-diluted basis, with the deal reportedly worth more than €800m (£705m/$853m).
