The Cloud Zone: Explore Consulting's NFL Solution

By Andrew R Hickey, CRN
June 21, 2010 12:29 PM ET

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Clemson’s Jacoby Ford ran the 40 in just 4.28 seconds, the second fastest time in the history of the NFL Scouting Combine. Meanwhile, Arkansas offensive lineman Mitch Petrus tied the record for bench press repetitions, amassing a whopping 45. Impressive numbers from a pair of prospective professional footballers.

The annual NFL Scouting Combine is considered by many to be one of the world’s largest job fairs and this year’s, held through late February and early March at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, was nothing short of amazing. More than 300 college football players were put through a rigorous several days -- testing their physical performance, their mental toughness and their problem-solving skills to determine if they’ll make it on the big stage: the National Football League.

Along with Ford and Petrus, who were drafted by the Oakland Raiders and New York Giants, respectively, Florida wunderkind quarterback and top NFL prospect Tim Tebow -- who ended up being drafted 25th overall by the Denver Broncos -- took the field with his NCAA brethren, all of whom were clocked in a battery of physical tests including the 40-yard dash, bench press reps, the vertical jump, the broad jump, the 20-yard shuttle and cone drill. Prospective pros also underwent team interviews, drug screening, medical evaluations and the Wonderlic aptitude test, among a plethora of other assessments. The information collected is weighed, evaluated and heavily scrutinized by the roughly 1,600 NFL personnel on hand, which includes owners, coaches, executives, scouts and medical staff.

The amount of data that stems from the Combine is staggering. And the days of pencil and paper just don’t cut it in 2010. For the past four NFL Scouting Combines, Bellevue, Wash.-based Explore Consulting has provided the underlying data capture architecture and technology, a cloud computing solution that changed the way data was captured and distributed.

Jeremy DeSpain, co-founder and COO of Explore Consulting, said the old method, in which NFL personnel recorded data by hand and later entered it into computer systems, created delays and was prone to errors and possible security breaches, as the data stored was later burned to CDs and mailed.

Explore Consulting, a professional services solution provider founded in 2001, was tapped to develop an integrated suite of applications built on its proprietary Detachable Compact Application Framework (DCAF), a reusable technology platform it deployed to help the NFL and National Football Scouting be more efficient in capturing and distributing player data collected at the Combine.

“Our DCAF application resides in the cloud 100 percent,” said Steve Jones, co-founder and CEO of Explore Consulting. “We’ve made them much more efficient.”

The application suite on the DCAF works like this: NFL personnel capture player data on the field using a Windows application. That data is then merged with a master database using a secure Web connection, and administrative functions are managed in the back office by a Web-based administrative console. Working in concert with the Windows field application, the administrative console can be used to manage data, workflows, processes, operations and communications with users in the field. It also offers a host of reporting options and can be used to publish data and other content to the NFL teams. From there, a secure Web site is provided for the teams to log in and view content, download published collateral and subscribe to direct, secure data feeds once the data is published and released by National Football Scouting.

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