Extraordinary Digital Experiences, Made Possible by Cloud and a Modern IT Infrastructure

With 190 participating countries and 24 million visitors, Expo 2020 Dubai was one of the world’s largest events, connecting everyone to innovative and inspiring ideas for a brighter future. But what does it take to support an event on such a grand scale? The answer is a robust cloud and modern IT infrastructure, which would allow 1,200 employees to collaborate with one another, amidst nationwide lockdowns and supply chain disruptions.

As part of the World Expos, Expo 2020 Dubai sought to create one of the smartest and most connected places to give its participants a lasting impression beyond the event. More than just departing with the knowledge and connections gained from the Expo, the organization also wanted to impart the rich cultural heritage of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). This means delivering a deeply personalized and hyper-relevant experience, from a smooth ticketing journey to chatbots that offered real-time assistance in multiple languages.

To bring this ambition to life, a robust foundation of technology was necessary, one that could support the seamless integration of systems and apps, and a myriad of digital services, and meet numerous, diverse IT requirements. It was with these in mind that Expo 2020 Dubai decided on a multi-cloud infrastructure that was hyper-flexible, scalable, secure, and reliable enough to support the event’s operations while serving as a platform to manage the build process for the event.

Behind The Winning Cloud Partnership

Expo 2020 Dubai was built from the ground up: a 4.38km² wide site comprising sprawling parks, a shopping mall, and the Expo Village. In the same vein, its cloud journey also underpinned the various stages of its development, including civil infrastructure, building construction, crowd management, smart city operations, and marketing. Key to this multi-cloud infrastructure was flexibility, scalability, and security, upon which its integrated, intelligent systems were built on. This enabled the Expo teams, vendors, suppliers, and volunteers across nations to work seamlessly together.

It is through the collaborative effort of e& and Accenture that the Etisalat OneCloud and Amazon Web Services (AWS) were successfully integrated to make Expo 2020 Dubai one of the first and largest true multi-cloud infrastructures in the region. Etisalat OneCloud provided the resilient, reliable, and secure environment the event needed for its localized business-critical apps, whereas AWS delivered the structure necessary to support global digital services and apps, such as websites, participant portals and eCommerce platforms.

But what brought both solutions together was Accenture Service Delivery Platform, which offered the interconnectivity for enabling several layers of integration at the app and security level.

As the technological groundwork of Expo 2020 Dubai consisted of over 90 applications, Accenture Service Delivery Platform delivered the integration the multi-cloud infrastructure required without any external systems while meeting the stringent app requirements around scalability, security, and hyper-reliability. This was done across six months of development and throughout the entire customer lifecycle spanning awareness, discovery, purchase, and post-sales.

Delivering An Unprecedented Experience

Through this sprawling multi-cloud infrastructure, Expo 2020 Dubai could host all the Pavilion designs, themes, and content from over 190 participating countries while integrating authorizations, supply chain management, and workforce licensing functions. At the same time, the event realized seamless and highly personalized experiences for its visitors with a suite of visitor-facing digital channels. This was inclusive of the Expo 2020 official mobile app, virtual assistant, and an official website.

Expo 2020 Dubai also incorporated a central information hub and a best-in-class ticketing journey alongside digital services tailored to a visitor’s personal preferences in real-time and in their preferred language. Then there was AMAL, a chatbot powered by artificial intelligence, instrumental in gathering critical information on the Expo shows and attractions while giving live feedback as the event took place.

It is clear that behind this global gathering of nations designed around enhancing our collective knowledge, aspirations, and progress, a large-scale digital transformation took place: one which enabled the multi-cloud environment for Expo 2020 Dubai and was instrumental to the success of this life-changing event.

The Expo’s key themes of opportunity, mobility, and sustainability were succinctly captured in its infrastructure, demonstrating the potential of cloud in unlocking intelligent operations and business agility. As evident in the successes of Expo 2020 Dubai and other businesses, such as leading transport fuels provider Ampol, cloud has become an indispensable cornerstone to succeed in today’s digital-first economy. And it’s this very cloud continuum that will continue to bring businesses one step closer to innovation, aiding them in delivering truly transformative services and experiences.

Read the full story here:  https://www.accenture.com/ae-en/case-studies/applied-intelligence/expo-2020-dubai