Ducati
Using NetApp® solutions, Ducati built a data fabric that enabled the activation of massive volumes of data from around the world. Now that Ducati is focused on data, the company can continuously optimize motorcycle performance on and off the track, increase the speed of new products to market, and elevate the customer experience. Ducati is positioned for sustainable innovation in a data-driven future.
Ducati
Ducati and NetApp build a data fabric to accelerate innovation
A Ducati motorcycle is an icon for high-end performance. Since 1926, the company has made every one of its bikes by hand in Bologna, Italy. Just over 48,000 motorcycles were meticulously assembled in 2020. To put that in perspective, a competitor sold approximately 19.5 million motorcycles in the same year. But this is a quality-over-quantity story. Ducati's advantage lies in the volumes of valuable performance data that help drive innovation. And this innovation ultimately creates bikes that the competition can only dream of.
Ducati worked with NetApp to build a data fabric, tapping into the data generated by roughly 40 physical sensors installed on its MotoGP motorcycles. Using NetApp technologies and a high-performance computing cluster, engineers conducted telemetry processing directly inside the box—on the track and in near real time. NetApp also enabled Ducati to leverage the enterprise-grade features of NetApp ONTAP® software, which improved the sophistication of the manufacturer’s data management strategy, including versioning, security, and NetApp Snapshot™ copies.
In 2021 the Ducati Lenovo Team won the MotoGP Teams World Championship and the MotoGP Constructors' World Championship for the second year in a row.
Through data, we were able to understand many key points that helped us compete and win the Constructors' World Championship and explore many interesting solutions during our development and tests.
Luigi Dall’Igna, General Manager, Ducati Corse
To meet storage demands, Ducati chose NetApp AFF technology to help consolidate a wide range of workloads and over 200 applications. This approach made all the data assets available in a single, unified system that enabled optimal productivity and a minimal footprint. Based on the success on the track, Ducati rolled out the concept of “connected bikes” to consumers worldwide, harnessing and analyzing performance data from over 15,000 motorcycles. And that’s just the beginning, according to Andrea Spina, Chief Information Officer, Ducati Motor Holding. “Within a few years, we might be able to collect data from over 100,000 bikes, accelerating knowledge transfer from the road to product development as we currently do from races to the product bike.”
By using NetApp high-performance computing and moving data to the hybrid cloud, Ducati was able to significantly increase the speed of new products to market. As we continue to evolve the partnership, Ducati will use its data fabric to inspire innovation across every aspect of the global organization, including making machine learning and AI opportunities possible.
Results
Ducati runs 200 applications and supports 90 virtual machines in a disaster recovery center. Their data fabric provides the speed and capacity to manage branch operations and to perform on-site data analysis while moving data to a hybrid cloud, reducing the time to develop prototypes and get new motorcycles to market by 30%.
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