If a week is a long time in politics, 12 months is an eternity in football.

Computing first spoke to Wembley Stadium IT and business process director Peter Warren last July, when the country was obsessing over the aftermath of David Beckham's protracted transfer to Spanish giants Real Madrid.

At the same time, Warren was beginning to consider how IT would be used in the new Wembley Stadium.

One year - and many text messages - later, David Beckham has been usurped by Wayne Rooney as the country's favourite footballer.

Down Wembley Way, meanwhile, Warren has begun to set out the technologies that will help improve processes at the new 90,000-seat Wembley Stadium.

Basics at the ground include a standard telecommunications network, with routers and cabling.

'It's a brand new stadium and we'll have lots to deal with just making the basics work,' says Warren. 'But when we want to use more sophisticated technology, we need to make sure we have the right systems in place.

'The overall strategy is to put in the most appropriate platforms that will allow us to deploy sophisticated business-related systems in the future.'

These sophisticated systems include smartcard, wireless and radio frequency identification (RFID).

'We are planning to put the right platforms in place to allow these things to be appropriately deployed, as and when we choose,' says Warren.

Smartcard access

The new Wembley Stadium will be smartcard-enabled. Readers will be fitted on every turnstile to control customer and staff access.

Readers will also be fitted in the back-office area to provide further back-up for staff access and control.

These readers will let staff into restricted areas, such as changing rooms, as well as providing a method of time and attendance recording.

But the stadium will also include traditional paper ticket entrance systems.

'I wouldn't want to say today that we'll be a smartcard stadium on the day we open,' says Warren.

'We would need to establish the operational requirements of the stadium before we decide on how we manage ticketing at opening.'

Warren says it's more effective to include the smartcard readers during construction than to retro-fit them.

And he says the stadium needs to be flexible to deal with future demands - including non-sporting events.

'We'll have different types of events with many different owners,' says Warren. 'Each concert, for example, may have a different view on promoting and how they want their tickets sold.'

Flexibility extends to systems, where Warren has chosen to implement open smartcard standards.

Wembley's technology will support the ISO14443a standard, which Warren says will give him and his colleagues the potential to integrate with external smartcard technologies.

'For example, we could work with a system such as the Oyster card on the London Underground, and maybe, in the future, we can sell a combined travel and entrance ticket to the stadium,' he says.

What's more, the information collected through the smartcard could be mined to help manage supporter traffic.

'You can start to understand the behaviour of the customer, and in terms of operating the stadium, begin to see that there is a demand for people to come in through particular turnstiles,' says Warren.

Preparation for wireless

Once construction is complete, Wembley Stadium will be ready for Warren and his team to deploy wireless technology.

The IT director has already identified areas of the stadium that are likely to have the greatest internal and external demand for wireless access. And category six cabling has been set up in preparation for this demand.

Wireless deployment, says Warren, will just be a case of plugging in the respective devices and configuring the relevant network.

'We're ready to go for wireless, and all we'll need are the access points,' he says.

Warren says it's still open to debate whether the Wembley IT team or an outsourcer will manage network installation.

But he has already completed a large amount of research into the application and deployment of wireless.

'I'm more interested in what you can do with the technology, rather than the details of how it actually works,' he says.

And he expects the physical environment to provide a key element in Wembley's wireless network.

'In a stadium with lots of concrete and reinforced steel, there are all sorts of bodies that degrade the quality of wireless coverage,' he says.

'We need to know that the wireless hot spots are being placed in the most appropriate situation.'

Research has led Warren to conclude that wireless could be used in two ways: as a standard management tool, to help Wembley run its business more efficiently; and as a customer-service system, to help individuals access the internet in the stadium.

Warren says there is a lot of complicated work involved in planning such a double-headed private and public network.

'It requires expertise in terms of how you go about deploying your devices,' he says. 'Wireless is still a fairly new technology and each given access point can only deal with a certain amount of traffic.'

'If we have operational requirements, we can't have those compromised by fluctuating demand from customers.'

By setting up a separate, private network for internal devices, Warren can assure quality of service for internal users.

'It's thinking about the applications - and then how you practically deploy the technology,' he says.

Likely applications will include giving all laptop users a wireless-enabled device, so they can have network coverage anywhere in the stadium, and providing VPN connections for customers so that they can connect via wireless with the office.

The potential for RFID tagging

Like all good IT directors, Warren is keen to explore the potential business benefits of leading-edge technology.

'I've been looking at how you can use RFID technology in a practical way in the stadium,' he says.

Wembley won't be deploying RFID when the stadium opens, but Warren is already looking at tagging high-value goods and the technology needed to make a pilot project work.

'There are a lot of parallels with how the retail market might use RFID that would apply in our business,' he says.

The key barrier to the wider adoption of RFID is the unit cost of tags. But Warren says there will be a stronger justification for tagging expensive items, as the price of the tag becomes negligible compared with the value of the tagged item.

These high-value items could include PCs and televisions - but there are a range of other practical uses.

'If you have a network of RFID-sensing devices, you could then begin to apply business rules for each given tag,' says Warren.

'We could even drop an RFID tag in the FA Cup.' The business rules would be quite simple.

'So, it might be that the FA Cup can never leave the Royal Box, for example. As soon as it does, the system sets an alarm off,' says Warren.

There would be other similar assets around the stadium that workers would need to locate quickly.

'It might be there's an urgent need for medical equipment, and our staff need to know where implements are at short notice,' says Warren.

'Tagging medical equipment will allow our workers to find out quickly where things are. 'It's a case of thinking through how you could use this technology in various business applications.'

'You then have to take the next step, and for each scenario think about the actual details of how you would deploy the technology to make it useful.'

RFID could also be used in more traditional retail areas. Stock control assets could be tagged, so Wembley employees could have an appreciation of the flow of inventory in the stadium.

'I've done a fair amount of research into case study examples and talked to a number of organisations that provide those kinds of services,' says Warren.

'I have an understanding of what type of applications are out there, and I've then applied them to our business scenario and considered where RFID might make a difference. It's a matter of undertaking a proper business case before we go ahead and do it.'