The Atlanta Hawks recently convened a forward-looking panel discussion that brought together leaders across sports, enterprise IT, and higher education, including Julius White, AVP of Infrastructure Services at Spelman College; Robert Amos, Director of Infrastructure and Operations at Altium Packaging; Rajesh Ganesan, CEO of ManageEngine; and Jon Santee, Vice President of Information Technology for the Atlanta Hawks and State Farm Arena, to explore the realities of modern technology operations and the foundations required to support innovation at scale.
The Hawks operate one of the most complex IT environments in professional sports, spanning three interconnected facilities, more than 1,000 endpoints, real-time NBA Data Link feeds, broadcast and media systems, venue infrastructure, and thousands of fans interacting with technology simultaneously, all supported by a lean IT team.
Santee detailed what it truly takes to run NBA games, concerts, and large-scale events at State Farm Arena, explaining that while NBA games follow a well-defined operational formula, concerts and live entertainment demand constant adaptability.
“For an NBA game, we have a fairly set formula that any team and any facility has to follow,” Santee said. “There are systems we set up, tests that we run, and reports we send every day to make sure everything is up and running and ready to go for a game.”
Concerts, however, present a different challenge, requiring close coordination with event teams and artists whose technical needs vary widely. “Each concert is different,” Santee noted. “We work closely with our event coordinating team, who are interfacing with promoters and acts and passing those requirements to us. That can range from a simple connection all the way up to entire racks of equipment.”
He emphasized that flexibility is critical, adding, “Because the arena changes every time, every show is different, and that keeps us on our toes,” Santee said. “We have to be very flexible and accommodating to what they’re bringing in.”
Santee also explained that while much of the heavy lifting is done in advance through strong infrastructure planning, collaboration across teams is essential when artists request complex setups involving power, rigging, or specialized production elements. “From a technology point of view, we’ve done a lot of the work beforehand,” he said. “We have the infrastructure in place, so when they tell us where they want it, we’re able to make it happen.”
Ganesan, CEO of ManageEngine, discussed the collaboration with the Hawks.
“A few years ago, the Hawks team had good processes, but they needed more tools to streamline their operations and automate their experience,” he explained. “That’s when they started using ManageEngine around 2021. They started with one product, and immediately they saw the potential in adopting more.”
Today, he said, ManageEngine plays a strategic role in the Hawks’ operations. “It came to a point where ManageEngine became very strategic for the Atlanta Hawks in terms of managing infrastructure and how data gets connected across systems, including critical NBA systems,” Ganesan said. “That’s where we partnered closely, and now we want to take it to the next step.”
Santee also addressed the accelerating pace of technology change, particularly around AI, cautioning against chasing trends without a solid foundation. “The pace of technological change just keeps accelerating, and the adoption windows are getting smaller and smaller,” Santee said. “You can’t get caught up in the shininess of it all. The fundamentals have to be locked down, because you don’t have time to go back and fix them when people want to start using 15 new AI tools tomorrow…You can’t forget about the fundamentals, because if you do, the AI initiatives and everything else won’t work.”
