It's an understatement to say that pulling off a successful
Olympic Games requires a seamless information technology (IT)
system.
With the world as an audience, allowing mistakes or delays is
simply "not an option," said Patrick Adiba, executive vice
president of Olympics and Major Events at Atos Origin, a French IT
services company.
Atos Origin will integrate and manage the IT system for the 2008
Olympic Games in Beijing. The company first started developing
software for the Olympic Games in 1992. It went on to win an
international tender and was awarded the technology partnership
contract in 2000 for four consecutive Games, starting with the 2002
Olympic Winter Games in Salt Lake City in the United States.
In recognition of Atos Origin's spotless record in handling the
world's largest IT-related sports contract, the company's contract
was recently extended until the 2012 London Olympic Games.
Adiba said the International Olympics Committee (IOC) had a
number of reasons for choosing Atos Origin for the job.
"We share a lot of values for long-term partnership, knowledge
transfer and teamwork," he said.
Knowledge transfer is a key characteristic of Atos Origin's
projects.
"From one Games to another, we try to re-use as much as we can,"
including software and processors, said Adiba. The company
re-deploys people and documents all lessons and good practices to
accumulate experience.
"Our role is not only to provide technology, but also to
transfer knowledge from one (local) committee to another," he
said.
Knowledge transfers for the Beijing Games started as early as
2003, when Atos Origin held meetings with the Beijing Organizing
Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad (BOCOG) and conducted
workshops with local partners.
Within a week of the end of the Athens Olympic Games in
September 2004, the team was moving on to Beijing. On-site work
started immediately thereafter.
Atos Origin has done much to assist the BOCOG, said Shen Lixia,
deputy division chief of the BOCOG Technology Department.
"They have a strong team working with us to develop the Games'
management system and information diffusion system and to make
plans for IT operations and integration They also shared with us a
lot of documents and statistics from the previous games. It has
been particularly helpful for us," Shen said.
"The biggest challenge for the 2008 Olympics Games is its
complexity," said Jeremy Hore, chief integrator for the Olympic
Games at Atos Origin.
For example, more than 10,500 athletes and 21,500 media
representatives attended the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens. To meet
that challenge, Atos Origin deployed a 3,400-strong team to operate
10,500 computers and 4,000 result system terminals, which monitor
individual events.
The IT operation for the Beijing Olympic Games is expected to be
of an even larger scale.
To start with, the 2008 Olympic Games will hold events in six
cities outside of Beijing. Hong Kong will host the equestrian
events, while sailing, beach volleyball and some swimming
competitions will be held in Qingdao, Shandong Province. Preliminary soccer matches will be
held in Shanghai, Tianjin and Qinghuangdao in Hebei Province, as well as in Shenyang, Liaoning Province.
In addition, a huge audience spread across the entire country
will be watching the games.
"There are thousands of devices, computers and servers, lots of
systems Yet everything has to be ready on August 8, 2008, and then
run flawlessly for the next 17 days," said Hore. "There is no other
event that's so critical and so complex at the same time."
A core team of several hundred people will work on getting the
Beijing project up to speed. And when the Olympic Games actually
begin, about 4,000 experts and volunteers will be carrying out
IT-related tasks, said Adiba.
Atos Origin's team enjoys a cordial relationship with BOCOG,
said Shen.
"So far, Atos Origin has sent a 52-member team to work with us
at the BOCOG. These people come from about 10 countries. Still, we
have very close cooperation and are working as one team to deliver
technology systems and support for the Games. We are very happy to
work with them," she said.
Hore said the design phase of the operation had ended and that
the building and testing stage was already underway.
Starting in July next year, the Atos Origin team will run one
actual competition for each sport to test the system, said
Adiba.
(China Daily November 17, 2006)