EURO 2012 – an opportunity for Polish IT companies

Hopes are growing for an economic boom in Poland. Experts unanimously state that there are five or even more years of dynamic growth ahead of us. Representatives of IT sector are also optimistic about the future.

- EURO 2012 is a great civilization opportunity. The deployed projects will be first of all of infrastructural character and data communication is an integral part of infrastructure. Therefore the IT sector, just like the entire economy, should experience acceleration - says Wojciech Głownia, the CEO at Avaya Poland.

900 km of motorways are to be constructed in Poland by the start of the championships. Airports will be refurbished, railways infrastructure will be modernized. For the benefit of the championships, big, modern stadiums will be constructed in Warsaw, Gdansk and Wrocław. The costs of all those projects shall amount to as much as approx. PLN 23 billion. A portion of that money will certainly go to IT companies, e.g. those specializing in creation of monitoring and access control systems. Qumak-Sekom Company, which implemented the project of monitoring television at the Pogoń stadium in Szczecin at the cost of PLN 1 billion, has high hopes connected with EURO 2012. The company carries out works concerning development of a prototype project of such a system for PZPN.

- PZPN wants to impose upon clubs the obligation of keeping records of fans. Due to this obligation the issuance of bans on entry for stadium hooligans will cease to be a dead legal provision - says Paweł Jaguś, the CEO and the director for smart building technologies department in Qumak-Sekom.

The IT sector might financially support the organisers in hope that such investments will yield surplus returns during and after the event. As an example the first official, sponsor of the new Wembley stadium is Microsoft UK. Administrators of Warsaw National Stadium would certainly not turn their back on a similar offer from IT leaders operating in Poland.

During last year’s World Championships in Germany, as well as during the previous Mundial in Japan and Korea, Avaya Company provided network infrastructure, which connected all stadiums and organizational points of the event. After each match 200 thousand people used the network constructed by Avaya. Terabytes of data travelled along the links.

The Emirates Stadium owned by London Arsenal Club, which was put into operation last year, is a good example of how much the world of sport has in common with IT. 60 servers and approx. 300 workstations work for the benefit of the facility. The stadium capable of seating 60 thousand fans has 100 entrance gates, 80 points of wireless Internet access, 400 screens presenting developments taking place on the pitch in HD quality and over 500 checkouts in restaurants, bars and other points located on the facility. Arsenal decided to purchase solutions of CA Company to manage such an extensive network.