The Seattle Kraken Implements a Robust Media Supply Chain from IMT on AWS in 11 Months

The Seattle Kraken (Kraken) envisioned a modern media supply chain, so they engaged AWS Partner Integrated Media Technologies Inc. (IMT) to implement the framework for a hybrid work environment. The Kraken are the newest National Hockey League (NHL) franchise team, and as they prepared for the first season at Climate Pledge Arena from 2021–22, the organization saw an opportunity to launch with excellent data infrastructure. IMT recommended Amazon S3, Amazon RDS, and Amazon EC2 for the initiative. Together, the Kraken and IMT implemented these services and deployed a high-performing system in time for the first puck drop.

When the Kraken brand was unveiled for the newest NHL expansion franchise in July 2020, the organization knew that it needed a modern media supply chain that would scale as the team’s fanbase grew. In addition to scale, data flexibility was a core need. “I’ve seen environments where you have to go through decades of tape footage and archived data to create content for the fan community,” says Erik Jones, vice president of technology at the Seattle Kraken and the Kraken Community Iceplex. “We wanted to avoid that and do this the right way from the outset.” The team committed to building their offering on Amazon Web Services (AWS) because they wanted a service that could adapt to meet evolving fan needs.

The Kraken engaged AWS Partner IMT for advice and assistance in building their new infrastructure. In addition to being scalable, the new infrastructure needed to be sturdy so that it could support hybrid work for teams across multiple facilities and global regions. IMT and the Kraken collaborated to document requirements and use cases and deploy an immense offering in time for the first puck drop of the 2021–22 NHL season. The team saw it as a greenfield opportunity to create a robust and scalable technology offering for both the Kraken and the community. “We set out to unlock fan engagement for decades to come by building the system on AWS,” says Jason Kranitz, president of systems integration at IMT.

The Kraken started developing their infrastructure approximately 11 months before the first game of the 2021–22 season. That firm launch date challenged the organization with timely delivery. “The NHL wasn’t about to delay the season for us,” says Jones. “We had to do our best to roll out on time.”

However, in addition to delivering in the short term, the Kraken wanted to build a media supply chain that would sustain the organization for decades. “We envisioned a new system to curate the terabytes of content that will be amassed over time,” says Jones. “It’s going to be a living resource that’s integral to our team for decades to come.”

The team at IMT got to work building a minimum viable product for the Kraken that could be expanded upon after the season started. Its minimum included a media asset management (MAM) solution, on-premises infrastructure networking, multisite deployment, and a scalable cloud offering. IMT recommended using a microservices architecture that would make it simple for the Kraken to update and enhance their system as new use cases arose. “Instead of using a large monolithic piece of software to do everything, we used several purpose-made tools built on AWS,” says Roy Burns, vice president of media solutions at IMT. “We aimed for the harmony of a multivendor, multisolution approach using reference architecture.”

IMT recommended several AWS services to meet the Kraken’s use case and prepare the team for game day. To store the Kraken’s data efficiently, IMT used Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), an object storage service built to retrieve virtually any amount of data from anywhere. More specifically, IMT recommended implementing Amazon S3 Glacier storage classes, which are purpose-built for cost-effective data archiving and offer 11 nines of data durability. “As a sports team, you know that your content’s going to have value from your inaugural season to your 50th anniversary, and you’re going to need access to that content along the way,” says Burns.

One of the most important tools that the Kraken required was a MAM solution for video management and asset creation. IMT worked with the organization to document requirements and administered a request for proposal for a MAM. The Kraken uses Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), a resizable compute service for virtually any workload, to run the MAM. “The MAM is used on game day and every day to manage content created by our video production team. It is a critical component of the fan experience,” says Rachel Dickert, digital asset management specialist at the Seattle Kraken.

The team also chose Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS), a collection of managed services that makes it simple to scale databases in the cloud, for the solution. “Our MAM uses AWS to provide secure access to video content with the use of Amazon EC2 instances, site-to-site tunnels, load balancers, and Amazon S3 buckets,” says Evan Hirata, senior server engineer at the Seattle Kraken. IMT paired the MAM with CloudSoda, an intelligent data mover that makes it simple for the Kraken to use any number of microservices in their offering. “One of the beauties of our system on AWS is that it’s really scalable and flexible, so if we change our strategy in the future, we can pivot and adjust flexibly knowing that AWS will do the same,” says Jones.

Based in Seattle, the Kraken play their home games at Climate Pledge Arena, practice at their headquarters at Kraken Community Iceplex, and have away games all over the United States and Canada. As a result, the organization needs to be able to securely collaborate in a hybrid environment. IMT implemented AWS Identity and Access Management (AWS IAM)—a service to securely manage identities and access to AWS services and resources—to make it simple for the Kraken to manage accounts. “Our video production team travels quite a bit, and it’s also working from home at various times throughout the year, so AWS IAM has really been important,” says Jones.

The Kraken are happy with the results of their greenfield project. “We’ve achieved the goals and objectives of our multiyear road map,” says Jones. “Now, we’re hard at work optimizing our systems and automating the workflows we rolled out during the past season.” Moving forward, IMT plans to use more artificial intelligence solutions to increase the efficiency of the systems already in place.

Both the Kraken and IMT are excited to continue building out an outstanding infrastructure for the NHL franchise. “Partnership has been the name of the game from start to finish,” says Burns. “Now, we’ve jointly got an eye toward the future.”