by Byron Connolly

Tennis Australia appoints new CIO

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Nov 04, 2015
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Tennis Australia has promoted its infrastructure manager, Primoz Trcek, to the CIO role. Trcek replaces Samir Mahir, who left the organisation mid-year after leading several analytics and digital projects.

Trcek has been with the organisation since August 2011. Prior to that, he spent 9 years as IT infrastructure manager at speciality fashion retailer, Country Road.

Trcek told CIO that the immediate priority for the organisation was to deliver another successful Australian Open but declined to comment further.

Trcek has big shoes to fill. Mahir had been involved in delivering technology infrastructure for tennis events since the mid-1990s.

He was IT director for the United States Tennis Association from 1996-1999 before spending almost 12 years as a delivery manager at IBM, project managing Tennis Grand Slam and Masters Gold tournaments.

In recent years, Tennis Australia has introduced a range of apps and websites to increase fan engagement and deliver stats in real time.

Its SlamTracker app visualises data and statistics from the event, using 8 years of historical data on players and the game in combination with real-time statistics during the tournament.

The organisation also uses IBM Watson to accurately predict what compute power is needed at different stages of the tournament. The supercomputer looks at game schedule, player data and historical information to determine if there’s a need to boost compute capacity to support the game’s digital services to fans.

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