News
The Cleveland Guardians may now have a competitive advantage on the diamond after the franchise bolstered their IT performance and simplified their cloud connection with services offered by a major provider.
By: Brad Randall, Broadband Communities
Windstream Enterprise has announced they were selected by the Cleveland Guardians, a Major League Baseball (MLB) franchise, to revamp the team’s digital environment, which spans eight locations including Progressive Field and ballparks for several minor league affiliates.
The announcement, released April 9, explained that the Guardians used Windstream’s Software-Defined Wide-Area Networking (SD-WAN) technology, along with a connection to the Google Cloud platform, to optimize the franchise’s digital performance.
As a result, Windstream’s announcement said the company was able to guarantee the Guardians “received secure, uninterrupted access to its critical network and cloud-based resources.”
Whitney Kuszmaul, a senior director of infrastructure and operations for the Cleveland Guardians, said Windstream’s SD-WAN made the Guardians more cost-effective and efficient.
“It gives us more flexibility in routing traffic and in synching data to and from various locations, and it even enables us to onboard new services without having to adapt one particular site or another,” Kuszmaul said, according to the announcement.
Windstream’s WE Connect portal also proved pivotal in the decision by the Guardians to choose the provider for their improvements, the company’s release stated.
“What really sold the SD-WAN solution was the ability to bring everything into a centralized portal,” continued Kuszmaul. “The Windstream Enterprise support team has been top-notch – the best service providers we have ever worked with.”
Mike Flannery, the president of Windstream Enterprise, said the Guardians hit a homerun by choosing Windstream and added that his company is thrilled about the new partnership.
“America’s favorite pastime is data science-based as much as talent-based, and in today’s competitive environment, with millions of dollars and fan expectations at stake, sports teams need lightning-fast connectivity, reliability and support for that competitive edge,” Flannery said.
