German data company SAP "has increased its foothold in football and signalled an intention to grow its business in the sports area with an expansion of its relationship with the German Bundesliga football club TSG 1899 Hoffenheim and the addition of German national team manager Oliver Bierhoff as a brand ambassador," according to Paul Nicholson of INSIDE WORLD FOOTBALL. TSG 1899 Hoffenheim "has been using software from SAP for a number of years," including the enterprise resource planning application SAP ERP for financial accounting, merchandising and e-commerce. The club "is now expanding the relationship" to include implementation of SAP Event Ticketing software and intends to migrate to SAP Business Suite software powered by SAP HANA and the SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud service. The club and SAP "are developing a real-time player analysis solution based on the sensor data collected and in-memory geospatial processing of SAP HANA." Sensors are placed in shin guards, clothing and the ball itself, "enabling the collection of an enormous amount of actionable data from training." The data "is then analysed using SAP HANA" (INSIDE WORLD FOOTBALL, 11/14).
