An IT team of 400 IT professionals behind the Beijing
Olympic Games is making final preparations before the event begins
on 8 August.
The team, which will grow to 4,000 by the start of the games,
plans to model hundreds possible scenarios on the software - such
as disqualifications or weather-related problems - to make sure the
systems can cope with unexpected events.
The IT team plans to deploy and install IT equipment at the
games venues, including 10,000 PCs, 1,000 servers and 1,000 network
and security devices in the second half of May.
Jeremy Hore, chief technology integrator for Atos Origin, IT
partner at the games, said the transition into an operational
environment is "challenging".
"Each part of the technology works, but it may not work as a
complete system. It is a challenging phase. We are dealing with 50
different IT systems and lots of IT partners," he said.
The team has been testing systems in specialised laboratories
since 2007. The first technical rehearsal in April tested 1010
scenarios with 30 sports. The final technical rehearsal, a "dummy
run" of the games, in the second week of June will involve nearly
every sport and venue
The team plans to run each system at the load level expected
during the games, before ramping up the load by 10 times. The test
identifies the failure point of the system and identifies the
danger signs IT staff need to look out for.
Atos Origin built two types of systems for the Beijing Games.
Games Management Systems support the operation of the Games. One
example is the accreditation system that processes more than
200,000 athletes, staff, volunteers and journalists.
The team uses Information Diffusion Systems to deliver
competition results in real time. The Commentator Information
System is a Java-based application that sends results to PCs at the
venues. IT staff collect results data using a mixture of electronic
sensors and manual data entry, before they are sent to the internet
via a data feed.
