Venue Management Solution

Movie script

London - one of the most exciting cities in the world.

With The O2, which opened in 2007, AEG wanted to create an entertainment venue for the 21st century that could house a variety of attractions under one roof.

The challenge was to create a state of the art entertainment complex, such as the Staples Centre in Los Angeles.

One challenge was fitting out and connecting the 20,000 seater multi-purpose arena and the entertainment area along with the provision of a network infrastructure, telephone system and cinema complex.

Only NEC could supply the variety of technologies needed for such an ambitious project. With its many divisions NEC can demonstrate its power as a multi-solution provider.

Lesley Saville

What stands out for us with NEC is not just the diversity of solutions that they can provide for us, but actually that they're proactive in those solutions so our project might have, we think solution A, but actually NEC might come back and say there's a better way of doing that and that's fantastic for us because it's real partnership.

That's really what we were looking for and it marked them out um, head and shoulders above all of their competitors.

From IP telephony to network solutions, servers to venue management, various kinds of cutting edge technologies bring benefits to The O2.

The latest technology is demonstrated in the 11-screen cinema complex - this was to be the first custom built digital multiplex in Europe hosting major film premiers and with NEC's digital projectors, the cinemas could be used for other activities - sport and music events and educational demonstrations could be viewed at The O2 in real time transmitting from all over the world.

David Jones

We have a huge variety of events here at the O2, everything from pop artists such as Tina Turner, Elton John, Bon Jovi all the way through to big sporting events.

Those events are really varied, have very varied technology requirements and we have quite tight turnarounds between events sometimes, so you need a network that's flexible and you need IT infrastructure that's reliable and you need to make sure that your technology can do the job for which it's designed.

NEC has provided a wide range of technologies here at The O2.

They've provided our network, our wireless infrastructure, our telephone systems we have here at The O2.

They provided digital projectors in our cinema and also innovative solutions such as RFID smart-ticketing both here in the arena and also in our exhibition area at the British Music Experience.

Through the RFID technology, visitors enjoy an enhanced and unique day out at the British Music Experience; the world first interactive permanent exhibition.

Visitors are issued with Smart-tickets which they can use throughout the exhibition to drive interactive experiences and collect items of interest, creating a unique personalised record of their visit to take home with them.

Lesley Saville

NEC was crucial to the BME.

THE BME was all about creating a museum of the 21st century and therefore using RFID technology was absolutely unique and it still is unique um, to this day in the UK and without NEC we would have not been able to do that.

The solution that NEC has been able to provide to The O2 demonstrates the breadth and depth of NECs technologies.

The O2 has become the world's most popular venue and entertainment complex, a true testament to the partnership between AEG and NEC.

Gary Dodd

The O2 is such a unique opportunity because when AEG came to us with their vision of creating the world's greatest entertainments complex, NEC under the banner of One NEC bought together all of the different technologies that we're able to bring to bear and put them all together under one roof to create this solution.

One NEC is a key strategic element of, of NEC going forward, and what AEG have enabled us to do is actually bring that to reality.

Now with AEG expanding across Europe, Asia and, and in America I see this as a, a major opportunity for both AEG and NEC to continue the partnership that has helped us create what we have here in the O2 Arena.

Lesley Saville

NEC was chosen from a number of companies as AEG's partner because they were proactive, because they have a great range of services that they can help us with, but mainly because of their approach which is between NEC and AEG, one plus one actually equalled three and that's fantastic.