Rip Curl Search GPS is powered by Rackspace’s ObjectRocket

Iconic Aussie surf brand, Rip Curl and digital marketing agency, VML Australia, have launched Rip Curl Search GPS, powered by ObjectRocket from Rackspace Hosting. This world-first surfing wearable technology enables Rip Curl to capture and analyze surf data, as well as refine its offering to customers through greater services and products.

The revolutionary Rip Curl Search GPS Watch captures data from a surfer’s session, including wave count, speeds reached, ride distance and session distances. Surfers then sync their watch to an iPhone, iPad, or desktop computer, re-living and sharing their surf experience on an interactive map. Surf data can be analyzed in real time and presented as summarized statistics for every wave, enabling surfers to gain insights into their performance and find areas of improvement.

Rip Curl Search GPS is backed and enabled by ObjectRocket, Rackspace Database-as-a-Service (DBaaS) for NoSQL MongoDB. ObjectRocket is a sharded and fully managed service for MongoDB, built with a set of tools and APIs designed to maximize uptime and reduce administration time for developers. Highly scalable, it allows customers to grow with their needs over time and scale up or dependent upon the demand they experience from their own customers.

“Having the right IT infrastructure to support wearable technologies such as Rip Curl Search GPS is critical to the overall success of the product. It is estimated that 30 billion devices will be in market by 2020, which will generate vast quantities of data. That data needs IT infrastructure that can capture, store, process and analyze, meaning that companies need to consider flexible, scalable IT solutions that can be deployed quickly and often in real time,” said Angus Dorney, General Manager, Rackspace Australia and New Zealand.

With the open-source-based MongoDB solution, Rackspace broadens its portfolio to offer Australian customers a NoSQL DBaaS for big data applications. This offering is built upon hardware optimized specifically for MongoDB and easily accessed and integrated into existing systems.

Rackspace is  an excellent option for the rising wave of cloud adopters, such as VML that want a trusted provider to help design and manage their cloud. Managed cloud offers them the power of cloud computing without the pain and expense of managing it themselves. This enables them to focus their scarce engineering resources on their core business, which is pursuing new products and customers.