The Dodgers are turning to a cutting-edge technology overhaul and revamping every facet of operations with analytics and a new, hyperconverged data center.
This article is part of the Technology Insight series, made possible with funding from Intel. As the 2020 Major League Baseball season draws to a close with the Los Angeles Dodgers and Tampa Bay Rays squaring off in the World Series, nothing is business as usual. The COVID-19 pandemic has left players in testing-constrained bubbles and teams with cardboard cutouts of fans in the stands. For some, this might be a time to plod along and hope that 2021 will be better. But the Dodgers aren’t leaving their future up to hope. They’re turning to a cutting-edge technology overhaul and revamping every facet of their operations with analytics and new, data center-driven experiences. Sports fans know the team’s exciting path to the Championship series. Here’s the off-field story of how the club will fuel new fan engagement and better modeling, so that when the stands fill once again in 2021, the Dodgers will be strongly positioned to deliver better fan experiences and more wins than ever. By 2019, the Dodgers understood that the infrastructure driving their analytics could mean, from a franchise profitability perspective, the difference between a game-winning homer and fouling out. And in a swiftly changing sport challenged by patrons demanding new and better experiences, their legacy systems simply weren’t good enough. Management didn’t just want faster systems and bigger screens a Dodger Stadium. They wanted to evolve how baseball was enjoyed. Contactless technologies would be part of it, including eliminating turnstiles and waiting in lines. Once fans are in their seats, they can enjoy individualized stat feeds and video clips on their phones. According to Ralph Esquibel, Dodger’s vice president, information technology, the IT department had 38 server nodes comprised of different machines with different firmware running different hypervisors, all trying to connect to the same storage area network (SAN). Business units were complaining about slow job execution, with some models taking a day to run. The infrastructure filled three racks, and so much required maintenance and administration that it stifled the team’s plans and growth. While the Dodgers are a big-name franchise, they’re also a small business. The team employs 550 workers, including an IT staff of fourteen and just two systems administrators. Esquibel called in Cisco, which pitched its HyperFlex hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) platform with Intel Xeon Scalable processors and Intel Optane storage.
