August 8th, IT News from Beijing
Let the Games begin!
Welcome to the first of the daily updates from the IT team behind the world’s largest sporting event – the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games.
Today’s Opening Ceremony of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games represents the culmination of more than four years of intense preparation for Atos Origin, the Worldwide IT Partner of the Olympic Games. The first members of the Atos Origin team arrived in Beijing in November 2004. Since then they have designed, built, tested and are now running the IT infrastructure that will deliver the results and athletes information to the world in less than 0.3 seconds.
Working with the Beijing Organising Committee for the Olympic Games, the International Olympic Committee and its technology partners, Atos Origin has built a massive mission critical IT infrastructure that would rival that of most corporations and towns. It spans 75 venues in seven cities to provide accurate, real-time information to the 200,000 members of the Olympic Family in China including athletes, journalists, volunteers and sports federations as well as the four billion TV viewers worldwide.
Over the next 16 days, the IT systems designed, built and operated by Atos Origin will ensure that the Games run smoothly, from providing the IT systems for the accreditation badges for the 200,000 members of the Olympic Family through to managing staffing rotas and accommodation logistics for the athletes and media.
To ensure success and deliver the best possible service, Atos Origin has:
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put in place a ‘one team’ approach to manage the technology consortium, made up of more than 4,000 experts, including 1,000 volunteers
- implemented IT security preventative measures and conducted over 200,000 hours of testing, during which more than 100, 000 different scenarios have been created and tested to ensure the team is prepared for any eventuality
- designed, delivered and is now managing the two IT Systems that help to make the Games happen:
- Games Management Systems - to support the planning and operations of the games
- Information Diffusion Systems -to deliver real-time results to the media and participants
- set up and is now running the PC factory together with Lenovo – the storage and configuration facility, from where over 12,000 devices including PCs have been configured and deployed to 75 venues in 7 different cities – all this in just 12 weeks.
The Atos Origin contract with the International Olympic Committee (IOC) is the largest sports-related IT contract covering: Salt Lake City in 2002 (operating as SchlumbergerSema); Athens in 2004; Torino in 2006; Beijing in 2008; Vancouver in 2010; and London in 2012. Atos Origin has primary responsibility for Information Technology, relating to IT consulting, systems integration, operations management, information security and software applications development for the Olympic Games.