UC Plays Hardball - Really

Back in the early 1990s, I attended a fundraiser for a non-profit organization called Harlem RBI (www.harlemrbi.org), a youth development program in East Harlem, New York that uses baseball and softball, and the power of teams, to provide inner-city youth with the opportunities to play, learn, and inspire them to recognize their potential.

Although not a great baseball fan, I did recognize some of the luminaries in attendance: John Jordan "Buck" O'Neil, Keith Hernandez, and William Hayward "Mookie" Wilson, the center fielder for the New York Mets (1980-89) who, in Game 6 of the 1986 World Series, hit a ground ball that rolled between the legs of Red Sox first baseman Bill Buckner, who flubbed the play, allowing the winning run of Game 6 to score.

I was thinking of Mookie the other day, as I heard that the New York Mets are installing a networking and unified communications system at New York's Citi Field, a new 42,000-seat stadium slated to open for baseball on Opening Day in Spring 2009.

Joe Milone, the team's senior director of information systems and technology, says the project "will improve communications among Mets employees and with the team's fans", thus increasing the pace of their business operations and fan services.

The multimillion-dollar system is being built using Nortel Networks networking equipment and UC applications. Nortel is the lead systems integrator, custom application developer, and sole architect of the complete UC solution. The system will play a huge role in the behind-the-scenes, day-to-day operations of Citi Field through a number of breakthrough technologies designed to enhance the baseball fan experience through game presentation and new ticketing technologies as well as food and beverage ordering and delivery support.

Just like an enterprise UC system, Citi Field's 200 full-time Mets employees will be able to connect teleconference bridges into the network and receive voicemails and faxes in their unified messaging email in-boxes. Although half of the 70 contact center agents working Citi Field's new administration building will use phones communicating via Voiceover- IP on the network, Nortel equipment also allows traditional circuit-switched calling to occur in tandem with IP communications, so it was decided to keep the other 35 call center agents on conventional telephony equipment in case of any IP network congestion or other problems. Additionally, just like the most advanced corporate UC systems avaiable today, the Nortel system can determine the presence status of an employee and how they can be contacted.

Future applications built on the Nortel solution will include those providing access to player statistics via wireless LAN, special IPTV replay viewings, and special multimedia-based communications to various areas of Citi Field. Nortel will also provide apps to handle ticket sales, concession sales and incident response (250 WiFi access points will deal with everything from wireless ticket-scanning to the submission of food orders from spectator seats).