AC Milan Partners with Pure Storage for On and Off-Pitch Innovation

Pure Storage® (NYSE: PSTG), the IT pioneer that delivers the world's most advanced data storage technologies and services, has announced the modernization of the IT infrastructure of AC Milan, one of the world’s leading and most historic football clubs. 

Customer Challenge:

AC Milan, a giant in world football with a global fanbase, recognized the potential of technology to help the club achieve two strategic goals – delivering the best fan experience possible through online content, and providing the team with data and AI to enhance club performance. 

At the center of AC Milan’s fan engagement is its Media House, through which video and social content is produced and delivered. It also supplies critical data to the club’s training center. Total number of employees and output had risen at the Media House over a three-year period and as a result, unstructured data volumes had also dramatically increased. Siloed teams, together with a legacy data storage system that was incapable of operating efficiently, posed significant barriers to progress. 

Customer Impact:

By adopting the Pure Storage Platform, AC Milan gained a powerful, efficient, and secure storage infrastructure that has underpinned its technology transformation initiative. Benefits include:

● Fast and Reliable, Low Latency Data Storage: With the Pure Storage Platform, AC Milan can now manage large volumes of unstructured data across multiple sites with very low latency, resulting in major productivity improvements. The Media House team now benefits from 10x faster content production and delivery. This has helped AC Milan reach over 500 million global fans through enhanced digital experiences.

● Enhanced Data Security and Ransomware Protection: AC Milan recognizes the importance of data resilience, deploying Pure Storage ActiveDR^TM to achieve near zero Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO) metrics. Additionally, Pure Storage SafeMode^TM Snapshots take copies of data which, in the event of a cyber-attack, can’t be deleted, modified, or encrypted, mitigating the impact of a ransomware attack. 

● A Platform for Cutting-Edge AI Innovation: Video footage of training sessions, stored on the Pure Storage Platform, can be analyzed using AI, together with player data captured via sensors with the aim of improving performance. Additionally, AC Milan is developing a data lake composed of players’ medical and performance data with the same goal. 

Executive Insight:

“Our team’s mission is to support the Club and the business across all departments so that we’re achieving excellence on and off the pitch. Pure helped AC Milan modernize our Media House so that content can be delivered across multiple platforms in one tenth of the time that it used to take. The project has been a great success and has marked a new step in our ongoing evolution into a media company.” - Maurizio Bonomi, Information Technology Director, AC Milan

“We’re thrilled to support AC Milan in its mission to transform the way it connects with fans, and its highly innovative use of AI to improve all-round player performance. The club’s legacy storage couldn’t keep up with its modern, innovative data demands. AC Milan’s Pure Storage platform meets their complex needs. These are cutting-edge initiatives that showcase how the delivery of real time content and AI can benefit football clubs and the welfare of their players.” - Joao Silva, VP EMEA & Latin America, Pure Storage