Baseline sits at the heart of the WTA tour. Acceptance lists, prize money, rankings, and player support all hinge on it. When I was asked to retire the decades-old ICAD system, failure wasn't an option—players still expect rankings every Monday morning. I owned the architecture for every component we touched—from the containers we shipped to the analytics pipelines that fed regulators.
Keeping the Tour Moving
- Zero downtime tolerance. Tournaments, regulators, and broadcasters rely on fresh data. We planned migration waves around competition calendars and provided fallbacks for every service cutover.
- Hybrid data reality. Sybase remained the system of record; Azure SQL shouldered analytics and modern features. We built connectors and caching layers that respected both worlds.
- Stakeholders beyond engineering. Operations, KPMG and ITF all had skin in the game. Roadmaps, risk logs, and comms packs turned architecture into a shared conversation.
Architecture In Practice
Modular services on Kubernetes. I containerised .NET Core domains—tournaments, finance, player services—and defined their interface contracts so teams could iterate independently while still deploying to a unified Azure footprint.
Data orchestration with guardrails. I designed ODBC/Dapper bridges to pull from Sybase, built validation services to reconcile deltas, and curated Azure SQL views to feed Power BI without letting legacy quirks leak everywhere.
Security uplift baked in. I led the Azure AD SSO rollout, scoped the APIs, and drove targeted remediation (including the OMIGOD review) so the new platform didn't just match ICAD—it surpassed it in resilience.
Reporting foundation from day one. I delivered curated aggregates, a masquerading exporter, and automated CSV pipelines so weekly reports and regulator submissions kept flowing.
Delivery Moments That Matter
- Acceptance lists and rankings automated with parameterised rules I crafted, freeing operations to focus on edge cases instead of spreadsheets.
- Player development tooling rebuilt after I reverse engineered legacy PowerBuilder screens, giving coaches and analysts a richer experience.
- ITF imports unblocked through patient stakeholder work—sometimes diplomacy and late-night SQL tweaks from me went hand-in-hand.
- Visibility for leadership. I translated backlog burn-downs into tour-level assurances, building trust during a sensitive transition.
Lessons Worth Sharing
Replacing mission-critical systems is as much about governance as code. By pairing containerised services with relentless communication, I delivered a modern platform end-to-end without missing a single tournament deadline. Today Baseline is a foundation the WTA can evolve instead of a liability they tiptoe around.