Dell climbs aboard Team New Zealand

Dell has been appointed the exclusive supplier of IT for Emirates Team New Zealand’s participation in the 34th America’s Cup in 2013.

At a media event on Auckland’s Waitemata Harbour today, Dell New Zealand manager Mike Hill said his firm will provide the team’s designers with IT systems, hardware and software, as well as offering technical support for the day-to-day operations.

"We’re very excited at being able to provide meaningful support to the team rather than just offering financial backing,” Hill says.

The support will be provided via a group of linked servers called a High-Performance Computing Cluster, housed at Maxnet on Auckland’s North Shore.

Emirates Team New Zealand technical director, Nick Holroyd, explains that the 700-kilogram cluster will be the ‘lifeblood’ of the design team in the way the hydrodynamic tank was ten years ago.

"Multihulls have never had this kind of horsepower thrown at them before,” Holroyd says.

"This cup, like car races nowadays, will be won by how quickly you can turn rather than just how fast you go in a straight line.

The cluster includes Dell’s Poweredge C servers.

Holroyd says over time the computing power will be transferred to the team’s meteorological department, who will use it to compute and predict weather patterns.

Grant Dalton, Emirates Team New Zealand managing director, says the 2007 team was ‘undercooked’ from a technology point of view.

"This is an important step in a relationship we hope will go on for a long time,” Dalton says.

The America’s Cup will be contested in San Francisco in 2013, following preliminary regattas in 2011 and 2012.