Tennis, tablets and clouds. To deliver a gadget-specific experience, IBM and USTA not only took into consideration platform features, such as screen size, but also how fans use each platform. With a tablet, Green said, users tend to hold the device in one hand while multitasking. That’s different from a desktop experience, which involves using a mouse to move from site to site.

But a bigger leap of faith for the USTA may have been embracing cloud computing. While Green spoke of the tennis association’s faith in IBM products, his introduction to cloud computing came on the winds of a hurricane.

Via Advanced analytics helps US Open build online sweet spot