AC Milan Innovates On and Off the Pitch with Pure Storage

AC Milan partnered with Pure Storage to revolutionise its data infrastructure, enabling faster content creation and enhanced fan experiences. It also laid the groundwork for AI-driven innovations in team analysis and aligns with the club’s cloud migration strategy, making it a hybrid, multi-cloud organisation.

In the world of professional football, success depends on outstanding on-field performances and a deep connection with fans. Understanding this, AC Milan, one of the world’s most famous football clubs with a history that stretches back to 1899, embarked on an ambitious and innovative technology transformation initiative focused on these truths. 

Led by two passionate IT professionals, Maurizio Bonomi and Alessandro Vita, the club set about overhauling its legacy technology operations in order to modernise fan engagement and also as part of a broader cloud migration strategy. In a competitive market, the team recognized the importance of the club’s global fanbase and are on a mission to deepen connections, bringing them closer to the game through innovation, while laying the groundwork for improved on-field performance through technology. Their aim is to allow fans anywhere in the world to instantly access content, including live play, across all online platforms. This will help the club engage new fans and stay relevant to existing ones.

The centre for AC Milan’s fan engagement is its Media House. One of the club’s most important departments, it is spread across two different sites at AC Milan headquarters and the Milanello Sports Centre, with responsibility for the development and delivery of all digital content. The department also fulfills a second and equally important role as the data repository for the club’s training facility — a vital component in data-driven AI initiatives. 

“It’s clear to us that the future of football is aligned with technology and we want to utilize data and AI to be the best team possible,” says Bonomi, Information Technology Director for AC Milan. 

Although Bonomi and Vita had a clear vision for enhancing the capabilities of the Media House, they faced challenges in making this a reality. An influx of staff over a three year period, together with a massive increase in content delivered through online, TV and social channels posed new challenges that needed to be overcome. And siloed working practices across the two sites further exacerbated the issues leading to latency and access speed complications and jeopardized their ability to instantly deliver content to the global fanbase.

Data storage was a central piece in the Media House’s technology challenges. The incumbent storage solution contributed to latency issues and needed to be upgraded. Following a comprehensive review of alternative solutions, Bonomi and Vita turned to the Pure Storage platform for its low latency capabilities, ease of use, agility and low TCO.

Bonomi explains that the decision to select the Pure Storage platform was based on multiple factors. “As a prerequisite, it’s very important to us that any technology vendor we work with aligns with our core values of excellence, elegance, teamwork and passion. Pure Storage ticked all of those boxes.” 

Expanding on the technology drivers behind AC Milan’s purchasing choice, Bonomi adds, “Pure’s technology vision, together with their platform’s low latency capabilities, ease of setup and administration, and a subscription that includes everything, made a compelling case. Additionally, Pure’s focus on sustainability and the energy efficiency of the platform were very important to us as we needed a green solution. With Pure, we feel we’ve chosen the best storage solution available on the market at present.”

The implementation of the platform and Pure Storage FlashArray™ in particular made it possible to publish real time video and media content instantly. This has been revolutionary for AC Milan’s Media House operations, resulting in major efficiency and productivity improvements. Not only does it work 10 times faster than before, but it has facilitated new ways of working for content creators. All challenges related to siloed workstreams across multiple platforms have been overcome through Pure’s technology. 

All Media House data has been consolidated on Pure Storage, allowing content creators simultaneous access, dramatically increasing the value of their work, as well as enabling them to work across different facilities. All this results in greater fan engagement and as Vita, AC Milan’s Information Technology Manager, shares, “this allows the fans to support the team in the best way and to be part of a big family.”

The Media House data initiative fits within a broader cloud migration strategy adopted by AC Milan four years ago. Today, the club is a hybrid, multi-cloud organisation. 

“An important part of our vision for the Media House was for it to support our commercial activities such as sponsorships, in addition to TV rights and merchandising, and to provide a better fan experience. All of these aims have been realized,” says Bonomi.

In parallel with its Media House initiative, AC Milan launched a new project that places it at the forefront of AI innovation in sports science. Player video footage, medical and performance data is being collected for team analysis. Pure’s low latency technology makes it ideal for these applications. As Vita puts it, “AI has multiple applications in the world of sports, and we’re working to deliver innovation in that area."

As part of its mission, AC Milan’s IT team is charged with the responsibility of managing and protecting players’ data, including medical and team data. This includes data from Milan Lab, a pioneering football science centre established by the club in 2002. The Pure Storage platform, working in conjunction with leading-edge cybersecurity solutions, is playing a vital role in the security and accessibility of this data. The low latency capabilities of FlashArray™ ensure that data is always instantly available to multiple users on demand. 

Cyber resiliency in the event of a ransomware attack or other cyber event was a key consideration for AC Milan when selecting a new data storage solution. The Pure Storage platform was ideally suited to this requirement, forming a cornerstone of the club’s cyber resiliency strategy with data stored and replicated on two FlashArray™ systems located at separate facilities. 

“Our second site adds a level of contingency in the event of a ransomware attack that we didn’t previously have,” explains Vita. “This gives us the ability to rapidly recover and continue operations in a worst-case scenario, enabled by Pure’s secure, efficient, and highly available platform.”

As AC Milan continues on its journey of technology innovation, on and off the pitch, it is expected that the club's data assets will continue to expand. The IT team believes FlashArray™ is the right solution for the club, with the capability to scale to meet future data storage needs, while staying within budget. 

“Pure’s technology was the main driver in our purchasing decision but beyond that, TCO was a key consideration,” Bonomi shares. “Through its energy efficiency and subscription model, Pure Storage saves us money, which is very important as we look to future expansion of data assets.”