The NHL Draft went cloud-native: 100% uptime, live on broadcast, no room for error
The NHL replaced a decades-old closed-network draft application, one that required physical servers transported to the arena, with a secure, cloud-native platform. The Draft ran without a single failure. Commissioner Bettman, all 32 clubs, scouts, broadcast partners, and league administrators operated from one unified, real-time application.
THE OUTCOME
The NHL replaced a decades-old closed-network draft application, one that required physical servers transported to the arena, with a secure, cloud-native platform built on AWS. The 2023 NHL Draft ran without a single failure. Commissioner Bettman, all 32 clubs, scouts, broadcast partners, and league administrators operated from one unified, real-time application.
HOW THEY GOT THERE
Presidio started with UX design, mapping every persona from the podium announcer to the Central Scouting team managing 11,000 player profiles, before writing a line of code. The application was built on a hybrid architecture using Amazon EKS in the cloud and EKS Anywhere for air-gapped on-premise locations, with S3 backup ensuring reliability regardless of arena connectivity.
WHY IT WORKED
The old system worked because it was isolated, but isolation meant physical servers on trucks and no path to modernization. Moving to a hybrid cloud architecture gave the league the reliability the old model provided, plus the real-time integration, automation, and scalability it never had. The foundation already powers other critical league operations the other 363 days a year.