In a fast-moving industry like the NBA, data is king. Realizing the intrinsic value of big data for the Boston Celtics has been a realization since 1946. It was Jay Wessland, Celtics’ CTO, who oversaw this digital transformation.
While Wessland came to the Celtics in 1990, at that time, nobody knew anything about big data within professional sports. However, as years went by it became obvious how much data analytics helps build game strategy. By 2017 he had created an analytics company but his NBA-scale SQL servers were not keeping up with them in terms of volumes and speed.
Wessland realized that there was room for improvement so he deployed a four-phase migration to the cloud together with his team. They chose AWS as their provider because they are well aware of its scalability and robustness.
- Phase 1: Lift and Lift
AWS lift-and-shift transfer was the first stage that led to these Boston giants being able to grow their on-premises infrastructures in a public cloud. That decision practically solved one of the Celtics’ most pressing issues: speed and scalability.
- Phase 2: Heavy Lifting
Windows had to be replaced by a Linux-based operating system, SQL Servers were retired, and serverless containers were created as a matter of urgency. This phase was challenging yet crucial signifying drastic divergence from previous Celtics tech stacks.
- Phase 3: Leaning into AWS
As Celtics cloud strategy developed further, the third step involved “leaning into what AWS has,” including automation, resilience, developer efficiency, and security capabilities. In this period, incremental tweaks to its processes and technology continued.
- Phase 4: Multiple AWS Accounts
The last pivot entailed many AWS accounts for which different parts of the organization can breathe. This move increased not only the visibility of spending but also secured data by separating access based on function
Gone are the days when there simply wasn’t enough processing power available to crunch game-planning data. The C’s can take advantage of cloud technology to provision resources as needed, process big data sets then suspend them afterward at reduced costs thereby making it an economical way of doing things better.
The Boston Celtics’ journey to the cloud is a great example of how technology has changed our world. It demonstrates how embracing change and innovation can change everything on or off the court.
