Major League Baseball (MLB), has resigned from Amazon Web Services (AWS) to choose the Google Cloud Platform, (GCP), as its cloud provider.
Google announced Tuesday that Google Cloud will be MLB’s Official Cloud and Cloud Data and Analytics Partner. This partnership will include MLB’s business operations including Statcast, the automated tool to analyze player movements and abilities.
In 2018, it was a completely different story. It was a different story in the summer of 2018. AWS machine learning services will be used by MLB to extend its long-standing relationship. Statcast, the tracking technology that analyzes player performance for every game, will continue to develop and MLB Clubs will develop new technologies to support innovative fan experiences across all 30 Major League baseball parks.
Statcast’s new-wave baseball statistics, such as home run exit velocity or “fastest pitches”, will now be delivered via GCP and not AWS.
Google announced that MLB will move its cloud and on-premises systems over to GCP in order to take advantage Google’s machine learning, analytics, and storage (data, and video) functionality. This technology will enable Statcast to use its data analytics technology, which features state-of the-art tracking capabilities. It will also improve the service, as Google stated that it “will work closely with MLB to bring to life the next evolution of Statcast as well as a variety of technological innovations.”
The Google cloud will continue to power Statcast and provide MLB with Google Ad Manager, Dynamic Ad Insertion, and other functionality as it has done for the past two seasons.
Google stated in a statement that MLB’s migration to Google Cloud had already led to an exponential improvement in analytics, decision making, and enabled MLB to provide teams with a single data plane to enable faster decision making. “MLB and the teams will maximize Google Cloud capabilities in machine-learning, network and analytics for the development and enhancement of the fan experience.
AWS’ customer theft is not a good thing. AWS is currently in a legal battle over a $10 billion Department of Defense contract that was awarded to Microsoft’s Azure cloud. AWS believes it was the best candidate for the contract and lost out due to President Donald Trump’s ill will toward AWS.
