Interview to Tenfield's adviser, Mr. Matías Cuelho.

How did the portal's idea come up?

I had the idea of launching a portal this year and we worked with the idea of taking the football supporters to the Internet, instead of achieving specific or elitist market segments. They wanted to buy the usage rights of our contents on the Internet, before launching the portal, but we jumped into the pool and decided to make our own thing, without getting associated to any other channel.   This is important because football in Uruguay has a very big cultural interest, a giant one, as in Brazil and Argentina and, I believe, unlike any other country in the world. Football is something that we Uruguayans smell, breathe and live since we are born. As Jaime Ross says, when Uruguay plays, three million run.
We had an idea of which structure we wanted to conform and we did not know if we had the possibility of being successful among Uruguayans and with platforms of here.  

Why? What did they look for?

We wanted to make something dynamic, and not a closed structure or one depending from a certain platform because afterwards the total property cost raises a lot.
First we thought of integrating a design, we wanted each of the segments that compose the portal to be made by someone specialized on the area, so we talked to the people of Centro Mac that have been elaborating very interesting multimedia projects for many years, and this way we got to GeneXus. 

Why did you choose GeneXus?

Some time ago, GeneXus was more oriented to banking solutions, then it started with the intelligent management of knowledge bases and in this last stage it has turned to Internet's technology and environment: the proof is on line (www.tenfieldigital.com) and it is working.  

What are its features?

We have a platform developed in GeneXus that allows us the dynamic and static management of all the portal's information. It lets us have a control of all the information or publicity –controlling the quantity of accesses to the banners or links- and have a control of the users that can be registered and, for example, acquiring sport clothes. We are shortly going to launch 40 or 50 products to be sold through the portal. We are also going to incorporate the system of tickets to the sport shows, and we are going to do all this with the same platform of database management of GeneXus. In any other case, they would be three different products, it would imply a specific product for managing or controlling banners, another one for managing users or key codes and users' databases, and another one for the information's dynamic management, in the case of a third generation portal like this one.  

What information does the portal have?

We have complete profiles of the last decade's selection players, all the players of the present national tournament, the cups that are being disputed, the history of the Uruguayan championships from 1900 to 2000, the history of the trainers, the physical trainers of the Uruguayan Football team, of the players' Mutual and of all the elements that are a part of the football structure.  Apart from that, we have the goals in five-second videos which allow the user seeing the previous movements and the goal some seconds after. We went for the Real Networks product, which is the video server for storing the goals filming, and the Real Player, which has a great approval in the market.
Instead of achieving a vertical portal that is specialized according to the football's characteristics, we are going to have several elements that, against the theoretical definition, are going to turn it into a horizontal portal.

What type of elements?

We are going to incorporate the baby football, we now have the university league, the salon football, the women's football, the Uruguayan team… all the Uruguayan teams that are now in the championship of the A and B divisions. This means we have the absolute coverage of everything that is going on, the thermometer in the right place and on the right time. 

What is the strategy to make the site profitable?

The profit will come through the electronic commerce and the specific services that we are going to develop for the users.

How many people have visited the site?

We have had a record of accesses since the launching and a very high occupation of the communication channel. The first day we had 70.000 entries to the first page

What's the supporting infrastructure?

There is a server (cluster) with the AIX operative system that runs on a RS6000 platform, and at the same time, another system that manages the video and the audio parts runs. We still have not implemented the audio broadcast of the summaries of the games that the user will be able to query later than the broadcast time, because they will be able to be downloaded with the Real Player.
Internet's enlace – that the Administración Nacional de Telecomunicaciones provides- is of 3MB that is distributed in 2MB with an E1enlace to the international channel and 1MB with UruguayNet (IP national net).