news-engine

Customer Building an AI-Ready Foundation: The Arizona Cardinals Story - - The Arizona Cardinals modernized their infrastructure with Dell Technologies and its partner Integrated Media Technologies, using Dell AI Data Platform file storage (Dell PowerScale) to accelerate media workflows and help drive business-critical systems up to 10x faster while strengthening cyber resilience. - With that foundation in place — which includes Dell servers, storage and cyber resilience solutions — the Cardinals are exploring AI across fan experience, football operations and media. On any given Sunday, more than 65,000 fans fill State Farm Stadium expecting an unforgettable experience. Every replay, transaction and social moment depends on data moving at the speed of the play. For the Arizona Cardinals, it’s the difference between a great game day experience and a missed moment. “We’ve got roughly two to three hours to create a meaningful experience for 65,000-plus fans each gameday and live event,” says Erik Jones, vice president of Technology and Cybersecurity, Arizona Cardinals. To support those experiences, the Arizona Cardinals embarked on a major infrastructure modernization effort with Dell Technologies and its partner Integrated Media Technologies (IMT). The goal was simple: replace its infrastructure environment, improve performance and reliability, strengthen cyber resilience and build a foundation ready for what comes next. What modern data-driven workloads demand from infrastructure Data-intensive applications running on real fan and football data, from business analytics to media production and emerging AI use cases, cannot run on an IT environment that is slow, siloed or difficult to scale. Media pipelines need low latency to move large volumes of content as it is created. Scouting and analytics need consistent throughput across structured and unstructured data. Everything needs continuous cyber resilience, including copies that stay clean and recoverable if an issue occurs. The Cardinals’ new modern data foundation is the difference between a great game day experience and a missed moment. Built on Dell servers, storage and cyber resiliency solutions, the foundation supports everything from football operations and business systems to media workflows and emerging AI initiatives. At the center is Dell AI Data Platform (Dell PowerScale), helping the organization manage and move the massive volumes of video and data behind those experiences. The impact is visible across football operations, media production and business systems. The Cardinals’ internal scouting and football operations platforms, which coaches and staff use to review video and evaluate players, run up to 10x faster than before. Analysts turn hours of film review into game plan decisions in minutes. Media teams pull, edit and share massive video files in real time, so the story of a game reaches fans while the moment is still alive. These business systems that once demanded constant attention now run quietly in the background. “We are able to focus our resources on innovation instead of monitoring our infrastructure,” Jones says. Cyber resilience carries the same importance. Fan data flows through ticketing, retail and digital platforms every game day. A layered approach with continuous protection and clean, recoverable copies lets the Cardinals stay confident that their most critical data is safe even as threats evolve. Inside the Cardinals’ new IT foundation Here is what each solution does in the Cardinals’ environment: - - Dell PowerEdge R-Series servers deliver the compute performance behind demanding workloads, including scouting analytics that now run up to 10x faster. - Dell AI Data Platform file storage (Dell PowerScale) centralizes and accelerates massive media workflows and gives Cardinals media teams the low-latency file performance to capture, edit and share game day content in real time. - Dell PowerStore provides unified, all-flash primary storage for business-critical applications like finance, business intelligence and day-to-day operations, replacing legacy systems that struggled with stability and scale. - Dell PowerProtect Data Domain appliances and Dell PowerProtect Data Manager deliver a streamlined foundation for cyber resilience across the organization. - Dell PowerProtect Cyber Recovery with Dell Cyber Detect protects the Cardinals’ most critical data with an isolated, intelligent recovery environment designed for evolving cyber threats. Building for future AI innovation A stable, scalable and secure foundation is what makes AI possible. With its new Dell-powered environment, the Cardinals are exploring ways to use AI to streamline fan entry, enhance retail and food and beverage experiences and turn hours of scouting footage and analytics into actionable insights within minutes. “Without the infrastructure and the work we’ve done over the past year, none of the things we’re thinking about with AI would be possible,” Jones says. “We are AI-prepared, which was a big core objective I outlined just three years ago.” You can learn more about Dell’s work with the Cardinals here. FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS Which Dell products did the Arizona Cardinals deploy? Dell PowerEdge servers, Dell PowerStore, Dell PowerScale, Dell PowerProtect Data Manager, Dell PowerProtect Data Domain appliances and Dell PowerProtect Cyber Recovery with Cyber Detect were deployed by Dell and its partner IMT. Why does storage matter more once AI moves into production? Because production AI is only as fast and as trustworthy as the data it can reach. Slow, siloed or unprotected storage stalls training, inference and real-time use cases and puts fan or customer data at risk. What business outcomes did the Cardinals see? Up to 10x faster performance for business-critical and scouting systems, real-time low-latency media workflows and an AI-ready foundation for fan and football use cases. What is the best storage for AI workloads? The best storage for AI workloads is high-performance, unified storage that keeps structured and unstructured data available to AI in real time, scales cleanly across on-prem and hybrid environments and is continuously protected. The Dell AI Data Platform (Dell PowerScale, Dell ObjectScale) includes storage engines built for that pattern.