Wiring the Beijing Olympics
By Elizabeth Millard
With 42
events in seven different cities, the trick to keeping the Games running with
state-of-the-art technology is a lot of hard work and testing to make it look seamless and perform well.
To call
the upcoming Olympic Games a daunting IT challenge is like saying swimming the
"A
key challenge that we face is to manage the complexity of such a big project
with so many components," says Jeremy Hore, Chief Technology Integrator
for Paris-based Atos Origin, which has been working with the Beijing Organizing
Committee and a consortium of technology providers to design, implement, and
operate the Games IT systems. The firm was also responsible for implementing IT
at the Athens 2004 Olympic Games.
The
systems, called "information diffusion systems," have been built to
distribute real-time competition results and employ about 10,000 PCs, a
thousand servers, and more than a thousand network devices. Not only will the
systems cover the competition venues, but also include coverage from seven
cities across
In terms
of hardware, a major contributor is Lenovo, which will provide more than 20,000
pieces of computing equipment, including approximately 700 servers, 800
notebook printers, and 2,000 desktop printers. The company will also supply
10,000 flat-panel displays. According to Leon Xie, Lenovo's Director of Olympic
Sponsorship and Technology.
one of
the most impressive aspects of the effort is not just its breadth, but how much
has to be built from the ground up. Xie notes that the company is building the
"entire computer equipment apparatus" from scratch, and retooling
legacy equipment to meet the demands of the Games.
Xie notes
that the most demanding application, the Games Management System, includes
accreditation, staffing and scheduling, transportation, and qualifications.
"It will process, store, and make available a staggering amount of
data," he says.
With the
information diffusion systems, about 50 percent is reused from the last
Olympics, Hore notes, so they don't have to start from the beginning, but that
still means that there must be a great deal of new functionality and
technology.
Within
the systems, though, are many applications that have been proven in their
industries, and have a reputation as being reliable technologies. One example
is ClickSoftware, a workforce management tool used to manage hundreds of
telecommunication technicians during the Games.
"The
Olympics is all about managing people smoothly, and to make sure the networks
are operating right," says Moshe BenBassat, ClickSoftware's
A particularly
thorny challenge for implementation of so much tech is that it can be rolled
out over months, but still has to perform, as Xie says, "literally
overnight." Basically, when the Games begin, the "on" switch is
flipped for information diffusion, and Hore, Xie, and others will likely just
hold their breath and hope for the best.
However,
they're not exactly working on faith. Extensive testing has been a priority,
Hore says, and The Beijing Organizing Committee has provided an Integration Lab
space that's 1,300 square meters, with 50 testing cells that allow technicians
to test systems on a sport-by-sport basis.
Testing
is particularly important given two new major aspects for these Games compared
to others: more data, and use of Open Source.
"The
number of sports has not really increased from
The Atos
Origin team has a much more comprehensive test plan for the 2008 Games than in
the past, he notes.
Also, for the first time, open source technology will be part of the software plan, and Hore says the IT team is very happy with the results.
"We still use other software
platforms from the traditional software vendors as part of the overall
system," Hore says. "But including open source has resulted in lower costs
for the Games with a very high level of performance." He adds that in
subsequent Olympics, it's likely that Open Source use will be expanded further.
Hore
notes that with the rise of mobile devices, the demand for Web-delivered video,
and the popularity of the Games, the push toward implementing cutting-edge
strategies, hardware, and software should be just as much of a constant as the
games themselves.
And the
biggest sign of success that all these tens of thousands of components are
working properly is that the experience will be flawless for viewers who are
watching jumbo screens from their stadium seats, Web video from their couches,
or results postings from their PDAs.
"At
every Olympics, you have four years of cultural and technological change since
the last Games," says BenBassat. "So you do everything you can to
make it perfect for this one brief moment in time."