Skye Cloud are changing the game for website traffic and security

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West Ham & Skye Cloud
Images credit: Skye Cloud

As London’s fastest-growing cloud services provider, Skye Cloud ensure businesses receive an agile IT platform that is easy to manage and budget for.

With head offices situated in London and Kent, Skye Cloud has seen an average growth rate of 40% year-on-year since its establishment in 2012.

In the cloud computing sector, the service offerings of Skye Cloud, the specific terminology and concept used can be somewhat tricky to understand unless you are involved in the industry. However, the general person is highly likely to use a variety of cloud-based applications during day-to-day activities unknowingly.

Cloud computing involves delivering a variety of IT services over the internet, ranging from networking, computer and storage resources to software and application. Therefore, when an individual streams their favourite tv shows on Netflix, opens an app on their phone, or shares files over the internet, they are directly interacting with cloud services.

Through its services, Skye Cloud provides companies with access to the core infrastructure, features, functionality and files of a cloud network, without having to purchase, store or maintain the system on their own devices or premises.

The benefits for organisations to jump on board with Skye Cloud include:

  • Centralised storage location – Cloud storage is instrumental for organisations whose staff require access to the same information and data to do their work. Enabling new means of collaboration and efficiency amongst colleagues. Users can rent cloud storage at a low price rather than using expensive external hard drives.
  • Cloud backup resiliency – The reliability inherent with cloud backup solutions comes from holding multiple copies of files and storing data in alternative locations. This layer of resiliency ensures that data will not be misplaced in the event of an unexpected outage or at a provider’s data centre.
  • Disaster recovery solutions – The cloud provides a fast, cost-effective disaster recovery solution, to protect a company’s data in the case of an unplanned catastrophic event.
  • Cost saving – Companies can save as much as 40% annually by migrating virtualised workload instances in the cloud, as costs are directly in line with usage.
  • Consistent updates – The software is continuously being improved and evolving to increase things like speed, capability, security, efficiency, and reliability.
  • Business continuity and business intelligence – an organisation can rely on the cloud to keep its data and applications active even if a disaster physically impacts the business.
  • Improved collaboration – Cloud collaboration tools offer benefits to employees, such as file versioning or real-time editing at any time. They can access data, applications, and services remotely from any device.
  • Increased capability – The cloud can increase or decrease, depending on what the business needs.
  • Performance and speed – Organisations can access high-performance hardware and software to improve their operations.
  • Data security – All clouds offer some degree of encryption, deterrent, and compliance, but private clouds remain the most secure from outsiders.

As a relatively recent collaboration, Skye Cloud has been West Ham United Football Club’s Official Virtual Private Server Network partner since 2020. This partnership has been extraordinarily valuable for the football club, with the organisation having a large following base demanding always-on access to live content, online merchandise and ticketing 24/7.

The Club’s fanbase banks on the website providing live updates and club news throughout the year. During a regular season, West Ham brings in an average of 58,000 home fans, with every match demanding a 10x spike in website visitor traffic, meaning the website needs to be able to perform as efficiently and effectively as possible.

Skye Cloud has enhanced the way the Club’s website operates, covering everything from organisational cyber security to software updates. Ensuring no lapses in website performance, Skye Cloud has partnered with Cloudflare, providing a secure and highly responsive match-day website experience.

As a result of the collaboration between Skye Cloud, Cloudflare and West Ham United, not only has the partnership eliminated lost merchandise and ticket revenue due to site outages and poor load times, but it has also significantly cut cloud hosting costs, with 93% of match-day requests offloaded to Cloudflare, coping with 10X traffic surges absorbed and crucially maintaining 100% uptime.

By bringing Cloudflare on board and managing the website traffic so efficiently, Skye Cloud has been able to pass savings on to West Ham United as reduced hosting fees. Thus being beneficial to all parties.

A recent addition to Skye Cloud is their new 321 service wraparound.

This new service has been specifically designed to allow the creation of a bespoke cloud solution to run on public, private or hybrid cloud, whichever suits consumer and business needs more conveniently.

Skye Cloud promises a bespoke cloud solutions strategy for the customer, followed by the company’s tried and tested migration process. The customer will be introduced to a commercial and technical account manager from day one and can expect face-to-face support, every time.

In addition to West Ham United, for the past 10 years, Skye Cloud has assisted over 30 charities and companies, saving them up to 25% on their annual IT budget.

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The Spreadsheet Is Dead: Majestri’s Fix for How Clubs Actually Assess Players

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If you’ve ever sat through a club’s end-of-season review, you’ll know the drill. A coach pulls out a folder of notes, someone half-remembers what a player was like back in Round 3 and a parent quietly wonders what they actually got for their rego fees beyond a team photo. Football club platform Majestri says it has a fix for that, and it’s built directly into its Player Assessment module.

Why clubs bother assessing players in the first place

According to Majestri, clubs run player assessments for one of three reasons – usually more than one at once. Some are chasing genuine development, using the data to lift the level across their high-performance squads. Others are after a fairer way to pick teams, putting every player on the same measurable scale so selection is based on evidence rather than a coach’s gut feel about who “looks the part.” And for clubs operating under a Football Australia or state federation licence, assessments at set intervals often aren’t optional – they’re a compliance requirement, with the paperwork to prove it when asked.

Whatever the motivation, Majestri’s pitch is the same: don’t let that assessment data die in a spreadsheet on someone’s laptop.

Build your own assessment, your way

There’s no one-size-fits-all template here. The Assessment Designer lets technical directors set their own criteria, sort them into whatever categories their coaching staff already use – think core skills, possession, defending, attacking – and decide what each point on the rating scale actually means. Crucially, every criterion also gets a comment field, because a bare number rarely tells the full story of a player’s development.

The Assessment Module Builder for an NPL Juniors assessment
The Assessment Module Builder, showing an NPL Juniors assessment with a 1-10 rating scale banded from under performing through to excelling and role-specific criteria grouped into core skills, possession, defending and attacking. Source: Majestri.

Build it once and it’s reusable every time that assessment cycle comes around, so every player and every coach – is working off the same yardstick.

Something for the parents to actually take home

One of the more relatable pain points Majestri is targeting: most families never see much tangible return from a season of fees beyond a team photo. Player Assessment addresses that with report cards – colour-coded against the same scale coaches used, grouped by category with averages calculated automatically, and delivered as a PDF or an interactive web page a parent can read without needing a coaching badge themselves.

A player report card for an under-15 player
A report card for an under-15 player, colour-coded from under performing to excelling, with a score for every criterion and a group average across core skills, possession, defending and attacking. Source: Majestri.

 

Turning the numbers into something useful

The real value, though, sits in what Majestri calls the Player Analysis Lab. This is where clubs can plot a player against their team-mates or an entire age group across two categories at once, spotting clusters and outliers at a glance. Every score gets read against the group average – so a “7” actually means something in context – and clubs can report at the broad category level or drill into individual fields underneath. The results can be filtered down and exported for selection meetings or grading purposes.

The Player Analysis Lab comparing players in an under-15 and under-16 squad
The Player Analysis Lab comparing seven players across under-15 and under-16 squads, with a scatter plot, a sortable table of scores against the player average, and controls for choosing which categories and fields to report on. Source: Majestri.

The admin side nobody enjoys, made easier

Beyond the flashy analytics, there’s a practical layer built for the volunteers actually running the process:

  • Sweep monitoring – a quick view of which assessments are done and which are still outstanding, organised into defined assessment periods so progress can be tracked against peers.
  • Individual development plans – every player gets a personalised plan, and clubs can group common improvement areas to run cross-team training sessions that lift the whole club rather than just one squad.
  • Access control – coaches and technical staff can only see assessments for the teams they’re responsible for, and completed assessments are only visible to people linked to that player’s registration.
“Hard numbers to draw on when you review coaching staff and curriculum – and something tangible for the players and parents who pay the fees.” – Majestri

 

The bigger picture

Majestri frames all of this as sitting on top of the club’s own data – assessment results live on each player’s profile inside the platform rather than in a spreadsheet that walks out the door when a technical director moves on. For committees, it also means hard numbers to lean on when reviewing coaching staff or curriculum, rather than relying on anecdote.

It’s a fairly clear read on where club administration software is heading: less about digitising paperwork for its own sake, and more about making the data clubs already collect actually work for player development, team selection and compliance  without adding to the workload of the volunteers who run the show.

For more information on Majestri’s Player Assessment module, visit majestri.com.au/player-assessment.

AI-powered camera system makes Supercup debut in live football production

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Image Credit: 2670469575

AI-powered camera technology has moved another step closer to mainstream sports broadcasting. This comes after it was deployed for the international tactical feed of the Franz Beckenbauer Supercup between Borussia Dortmund and Bayern Munich.

The system, supplied by Broadcast Solutions, combined Studio Automated’s AI camera automation platform with an Egripment HotHead 3 remote head during the fixture at Signal Iduna Park on 22 August. The Bundesliga and host broadcaster Sportcast have regularly used the season-opening match as a testing ground for new technologies.

Rather than simply tracking the ball or individual players, Studio Automated’s technology analyses the wider match scene and uses broadcast production principles to determine framing and camera movements.

The system was used to operate a camera positioned on the stadium’s main camera gantry. As a result, the footage was available as part of the international tactical production.

The deployment is significant because it demonstrates how AI camera operation can move from trade-show demonstrations into live professional broadcast environments. The companies first showcased the integrated technology at SportsInnovation earlier this year.

The system operates on standard on-premises hardware and does not require cloud connectivity or a calibration process. Its low-latency operation also allows the remote head to respond in a way designed to replicate the movement of a conventional manually operated camera.

Importantly, the technology does not replace the wider production team. The automated camera operates as another source within a multi-camera environment. In this setup, the production team retains control over which images make it to air. This positions AI as a tool for expanding production capabilities rather than removing the role of existing broadcast teams.

For broadcasters and production companies, the potential extends beyond major Bundesliga fixtures. Automated camera positions could help reduce the operational requirements associated with remote and lower-cost productions. At the same time, they can maintain a higher standard of coverage.

Broadcast Solutions will continue showcasing the technology with Studio Automated and Egripment at IBC 2026 in Amsterdam. At this event, the companies will demonstrate integrated workflows for sports production.

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