Unless you know all the nuances of baseball, it’s hard to understand all that has to happen behind the scenes on gamedays to ensure everything goes smoothly for both players and fans. There is a massive amount of technology that goes into the operations around a Major League Baseball (MLB) game, from data collection to security. And with 162 games played per season (plus Postseason and Spring Training games), it is critical to build the right team and partner with best-in-class providers to ensure the behind-the-scenes environment runs like clockwork so fans can sit back and enjoy the sport they love.

Citrix technology is woven into many aspects of how MLB does business, helping the league and its 30 clubs operate more efficiently, consistently, and reliably.

“Our innovation partnership with Citrix is an important one,” Neil Boland, Chief Information Security Officer and a 13-year veteran of MLB, says. “We work closely to make sure our constituencies both on the club side and our employee base are able to do their work when and where they need to do it, providing a ton of flexibility and the right engagement in terms of security and supporting applications.”

Much like the players on the field, MLB internal departments need innovative tools so they can quickly access the resources they need to perform at the highest level. Citrix offers just that.

Citrix’s virtualization solutions have been transformational for MLB’s workforce enablement.

“Baseball has a lot of big events — MLB at Field of Dreams, All-Star Week, the Postseason — that require large staffing,” Boland says. “Citrix allows us to rethink how we staff those events. We’re sending Citrix to the event rather than a person. The technology platform allows us to have a person present when we need them there, even if they are on the other side of the world or engaged in another important activity. This allows us to be more strategic and much more efficient in how we bring people and technology together.”

Flexibility and consistency are also key benefits of Citrix for MLB, Boland says. “The league can hire people from different cities around the country to help us run the game. They help us track what’s going on game day while using equipment they are comfortable with, making them more effective. And with a more remote workforce and teams that are now dispersed and spread out, it becomes even more important to allow people to operate the same way no matter where they are. This has really changed how we do business in different markets, making MLB platforms more accessible to the broader workforce.”

Now, staff traveling to events travel lighter, and MLB workers hired locally no longer have to be equipped with additional hardware or other materials. Additionally, there are people who can participate remotely from anywhere around the world.

“At our bigger events, Citrix changes the game for us,” Boland says. “The manpower that participates locally from MLB remotely is far greater than ever before, allowing us to operate more broadly than we ever have been able to do before, really helping us drive the next iteration of technology at our events.”

In addition to providing the backbone of MLB’s IT infrastructure, Citrix also provides security over MLB’s data entry. Baseball is a data-intensive sport with an immense amount of data produced, and security for on both the club side and for MLB employee base is crucial.

“The partnership with Citrix has become very important for us because it gives us three things: greater security over our data entry; increased visibility into what our operators are doing in the ballpark; and cost efficiency because we don’t have to manage as much hardware,” says Cory Schwartz, Vice President of Data Operations for MLB and in his 22nd season with the league. “Citrix allows us to use any device, anywhere, anytime.”

MLB uses Citrix in multiple ways both in the ballpark and remotely to support data operations and provide live data for sports betting, fans, and broadcasters.

“Data operations is a critical part of our game day operation,” Schwartz says. “In the past we’ve worked with different tools to perform some of these services, but they didn’t provide the visibility into what the operators were doing like Citrix workspace does. With Citrix, we control the working environment, which gives us the security and visibility to provide a better experience for the operator. We can function with greater confidence during game nights because we see what the operators are doing. This speeds up the decision-making and communication process, allowing us to get more accurate, detailed, and official data in a timelier fashion than we have in the past.”

Citrix has transformed the way MLB does business, Schwartz says, and has helped to enable a move into the future from an operational and support standpoint.

“We’re able to get accurate, timely, official, and detailed data, but we’re able to do it faster and with much more confidence, visibility, and security,” he says. “We don’t have to worry about other applications or services running on those computers or viruses. Citrix has been a great tool for us to integrate how we operate on game day.”

While the game on the field might not have changed a lot over the years, behind the scenes MLB is becoming increasing savvy, efficient and effective with their operations, with help from Citrix.

Learn more about the partnership between Citrix and Major League Baseball.

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