The Kraft Group CIO Michael Israel On Standardization, AI And Collaboration With Other NFL Teams

The Kraft Group CIO Michael Israel, who oversees IT operations for The Kraft Group and its operating companies including The New England Patriots and Gillette Stadium, sounds off on the importance of standardization, key partnerships and collaboration with other NFL teams.

When Michael Israel became the CIO of The Kraft Group five years ago, he says what kept him up at night was the fear of potential issues because of the lack of standardization.

“In my mind, the pressure was greater then because nothing was being monitored the way it should have been,” he said.

Five years later, IT standardization has become part of the best practices under Israel’s leadership.

“The common piece that you will see in every IDF (Independent Distribution Frame) and every MDF (Main Distribution Frame) that we have is core IT 101 of documentation and standardization,” said Israel. “If you go to any of our as builds or any of our pieces, no one is moving anything unless they go through change management and document it. That is critical to everything that we do.”

Acadia Technology Group President Kevin Hynes, who has worked on cutting-edge IT projects with Israel for 20 years, said the focus on standardization is one of Israel’s great “gifts” to the Kraft organization, which owns the New England Patriots football team.

“Everything is standardized,” he said of The Kraft Group’s IT operations, which spans Gillette Stadium, Kraft Sports and Entertainment, Patriots, The New England Revolution, Kraft Analytics Group, Patriot Place, International Forest Products, Rand-Whitney Containerboard and the Rand-Whitney Group. “As we like to say in engineering, that means it is deterministic and predictable. Michael enforces standards. You can see the cabling and the lettering, which is a physical representation of what he expects from software, documentation and operations.”

Israel, a 30-year-plus IT veteran, said the focus on standardization is part of the best practices he brings from his years as a consultant and reseller. “I mentor the folks who work for me, showing them this is the way you do it,” he said.

Here are excerpts from CRN’s discussion with Israel on a wide range of issues, including the importance of standardization, key partnerships and collaboration with other NFL teams.

On The Importance Of Documentation And Standardization

The common piece that you will see in every IDF (Independent Distribution Frame) and every MDF (Main Distribution Frame) that we have is core IT 101 of documentation and standardizardization.

If you go to any of our as builds or any of our pieces, no one is moving anything unless they go through change management and document it. That is critical to everything that we do.

You have to put controls in place. When you talk about cloud, folks could start using an app that you are not aware of. You need to ask if you have data leaking somewhere that you are not aware of.

We need to make sure that we know what is being used—not because we want to be Big Brother, but because in this day and age the slightest data leak will lead to penetration that you are not expecting.

On The Impact The Cisco IP Fabric For Media Network Has Had On Fan Experience

The biggest impact on the fan experience is our production control room. It is the ability for us to enhance where we go and how we engage with fans. Remember, we are fighting to not just make sure we have a stadium full of fans, but that it is a better experience than staying home and watching the game on TV.

You also have changing demographics, with some fans watching it on their phone or anywhere. We want to make sure this is a place where the experience as a whole makes folks want to keep coming back.

On Key Partnerships, Including Dell Technologies

All our endpoints are Dell. All of our storage and server systems are Dell. They are our other prime partner.

On security, we expand constantly. Right now we use Carbon Black. We use Secureworks.

We get audited by The NFL. We get audited by a variety of other agencies. We had The Department of Homeland Security in this past year.

The big piece we are looking at now is continuing with non-IT security, not just IoT (Internet of Things), but facilities components—the elevator systems, any videoboard systems. Also in our manufacturing plants, any of our manufacturing machines that are now being monitored by the network.

We must make sure the components of the machines from Siemens to ABB are being patched. So we are really reeducating our end users and our business partners to realize if we have bought a machine with computers in it and it is going on the network, then it has to have a patch plan and a management plan. That is something that those traditional vendors aren’t accustomed to.

If you go to any of our manufacturing plants, for example, we monitor how well these machines are running. So there is a connection there. If there is a connection there, we have to look at how to lock it down.

On Collaboration With Other NFL Teams

We are really more like operational consultants. If we see something we say, ‘How can we adopt that?’ We also do a lot of sharing with peers in the league.

The NFL teams are very collaborative with one another. Most teams have a much smaller staff than I do. Because I support the other Kraft businesses, we have more of an ecosystem.

We’ll bounce things off each other. We learn what vendors are doing well, what partners are doing well, where things are not going well. We don’t always have to be the guinea pig.

We also benefit from the fact that it is not just football games here. We have The New England Revolution. We have concerts. This venue is being used as convention space. So we have activities going on almost everyday. The systems are getting used everyday. Guest Wi-Fi is huge. There are 1,600 [Wireless Access Points] on the campus.

On The Use of Verizon 5G

If you are a Verizon customer and you enter the grounds, you are onboarded onto our Wi-Fi system. We are still evaluating the use cases for private 5G. It is there, but we’re still trying to figure out what can we connect to.

On Cloud Computing And The Hybrid IT Landscape

We have hybrid components. We are on [Microsoft] 365. A lot of our applications are SaaS-based. So point of sales is cloud. Our inventory systems are cloud. Salesforce.com is cloud.

When we look at our manufacturing plants, the systems that run the mills are on-prem. If you lose connectivity, that mill stops. You can’t make up for down production time.

We have two-and-a-half petabytes of video storage. We have video storage here. I have a private [co-location] facility elsewhere where we’ll sync back and forth.

Every contract we have when it comes to renewal time, we reevaluate. We have gone through the math multiple times on the cost to store all of that legacy data in the cloud.

We look at the application, we look at the use case and we look at, ultimately, what’s the cost.

On IT Systems For Broadcasting NFL Games

Anything that is broadcast for the game itself is controlled by either the NFL or [Major League Soccer]. So when you see a game at home, that is them. Anytime our team is practicing, going to off-site events, pre-season games, that is us doing it. Any time [Kraft Group Founder, Chairman and CEO] Mr. [Robert] Kraft speaks somewhere, that is all internal.

We keep everything. And when we look at the amount of data that we have and look at putting it up there in the cloud, it is much more expensive.

On IT Buzzwords And Generative AI

I’ve been doing this long enough to hear all the buzzwords, say, generative AI. Can someone explain what it actually means and how can I use it? I don’t have a huge staff of developers. So you need to bring us real solutions that we can put into production.

We are looking at one right now related to translation services. If someone is calling into our sales center and they speak in Portuguese, it would translate it into English for my operators. When our operators speak back it will translate it back into Portuguese. That is a real use case with a real benefit.

On Reducing The Panes Of Glass To Run The Business

What we try to do is to reduce the panes of glass. I don’t need a new tool because of a feature. I need my staff to utilize the tools that we have as best they can.

We are a very large small business, so when some very large operational management systems come out, I can’t hire five people to run that system. I can’t spend millions of dollars to open service desk tickets. We need turnkey-type capability.