Rackspace helps Rip Curl ride Big data wave

BANGALORE, INDIA: Iconic Aussie surf brand, Rip Curl and digital marketing agency, VML Australia, have launched Rip Curl Search GPS, powered by ObjectRocket from Rackspace Hosting. This world-first surfing wearable technology enables Rip Curl to capture and analyse surf data, as well as refine its offering to customers through greater services and products.

The Rip Curl Search GPS Watch captures data from a surfer's session, including wave count, speeds reached, ride distance and session distances. Surfers then sync their watch to an iPhone, iPad, or desktop computer, re-living and sharing their surf experience on an interactive map. Surf data can be analysed in real-time and presented as summarised statistics for every wave, enabling surfers to gain insights into their performance and find areas of improvement.

Rip Curl Search GPS is backed and enabled by ObjectRocket, Rackspace Database-as-a-Service (DBaaS) for NoSQL MongoDB. ObjectRocket is a sharded and fully managed service for MongoDB, built with a set of tools and APIs designed to maximise uptime and reduce administration time for developers. Highly scalable, it allows customers to grow with their needs over time and scale up or dependent upon the demand they experience from their own customers.

"The capture and subsequent analysis of surf data presents endless possibilities and opportunities for us," said Shane Helm, global chairman - Watches and Equipment Division at Rip Curl. "Using ObjectRocket for Rip Curl Search GPS helps us capture data and provides deep insights into surfing patterns and behaviour. We can then offer improvements to the surfing community, as well as help refine our own offering to surfers.

"ObjectRocket allows us to scale based on our demand whenever we need to. If demand peaks or falls for the service at different times of the year, we have a solution that will automatically adjust with us and is managed by experts. It is highly cost effective with 10,000 users, 100,000 users or 500,000 users - wherever they are in the world."

"Having the right IT infrastructure to support wearable technologies such as Rip Curl Search GPS is critical to the overall success of the product. It is estimated that 30 billion devices will be in market by 2020, which will generate vast quantities of data. That data needs IT infrastructure that can capture, store, process and analyse, meaning that companies need to consider flexible, scalable IT solutions that can be deployed quickly and often in real-time," said Angus Dorney, general manager, Rackspace Australia and New Zealand.