Pitch-side technicians at Finnish sports-advertising company Supponor are communicating better and more easily thanks to a new cloud-based server that they’ve migrated to with the help of First Line.

Supponor specialises in running digital billboard replacement technology at live sporting events, such as football matches.

Its product DBRLive is a combination of a fibre optic attached to host broadcast cameras and a system which replaces the billlboard adverts in different live broadcast streams.

This means that fans watching the event on television around the world will see advertising on the perimeter billboards that has been tailored to their country, while fans inside the stadium see something else.

In order to run the system properly, there has to be a Supponor technician at the sporting event working with the outside broadcast team, and also logging on to the company’s computer systems in order to manage the advertising feeds.

The fact that the business is completely based on people being out and about in the field made them ideal candidates for a cloud-based IT solution, according to First Line’s technical director, John Crozier: “Not all cloud-based solutions are equal, but we believe that we found the right one for this client.

So much of their work is done in the field that they really didn’t want to be messing around with VPNs [virtual private networks] or complicated connections.

With a cloud-server, all they need to get up and running is a good internet connection – and, thankfully, major club and international football stadiums tend to have pretty good provision on that front!”

The migration itself was, according to John, one of the smoothest he’s ever been involved with, probably due to the technical background of the company. “Migrations are all about providing support to people as they get used to a slightly different way of doing things.

Everyone at Supponor was happy to give something new a try, and as a result the new systems are working really well and everyone is using them.”