Where IT commands the Olympics

One slipup in the massive IT infrastructure behind the Beijing Olympics and the world's most prestigious sporting event could come to a crashing halt. The key tech vendor supporting the Games understands this, and will be closely monitoring all events from the main command center.

Atos Origin, the Worldwide IT Partner for the Olympic Games, is responsible for building, managing and securing the technology infrastructure that supports operations at Beijing 2008. Central to these tasks is the Technology Operations Center (TOC), which is managed by the international IT services company.

Serving as the IT command center for the Games, the TOC plays a critical role in ensuring results are relayed in a timely, accurate and secure way to the millions of viewers worldwide as well as the thousands of reporters at the sports venues in Beijing and six other cities, including Hong Kong.

To prepare for the sporting event, Atos has had a team in Beijing since October 2004, working with the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games (BOCOG) and various international and local technology partners.

The company has primary responsibilities for IT consulting, systems integration, operations management, information security and software development required for the Games.

Keeping operations in winning form
As Atos' operations manager, Michele Hyron manages and coordinates all the IT operational activities including venue planning and operations, systems implementation, helpdesk operations and training. Her responsibilities also include staff planning for some 400 Atos IT professionals and thousands of technology volunteers.

"One of the key challenges has been to prepare the massive deployment of tens of thousand of equipment in more than 70 venues in a short time, and making sure the proper version of software is deployed for each of them," Hyron told ZDNet Asia in an e-mail interview.

"We have strict implementation policies, a reliable software distribution solution and extensively trained the core IT teams at the venues," said the Computer Science graduate from Ecole Polytechnique Feminine in France. "We have been practising all of this through test events and technical rehearsals during the last year in order to be ready."

Hyron is part of the TOC cohort, which comprises more than 400 people with various skillsets including games management system experts, and technical experts in fields such as networking, telecommunications, Windows, Unix, security and databases. There are also information diffusion system experts who are responsible for the smooth running of the commentator information system, at-venue results system, and Internet data feeds.

During the Olympics, the number of IT professionals supporting the TOC will grow 10-fold to over 4,000, including 1,000 volunteers stationed at more than 70 competition and non-competition venues. Tech teams assigned at each venue will be in charge of monitoring the venue services and infrastructure, and will provide onsite support.

Hyron is also one of three team leaders who each heads a group of TOC members, as they change shifts to manage and operate the center, which has been in operation 24 by 7 since Jul. 25 and will remain so until the Games end Aug. 24.

The Olympics in capable hands

Atos Origin's operations manager, Michele Hyron, was a member of the team that delivered the world's first computerized nuclear plant control system in 1995, when she served as project manager for Atos Energy Division in Grenoble, France.
Since 1999, Hyron has been involved in various Olympic projects. She was the systems integration manager for the Athens 2004 Olympic Games, where she was responsible for exhaustive integration testing of that year's key IT systems.
Atos provides two main IT systems for the Beijing Olympics: the Games Management System (GMS), which helps the organizing committee plan and prepare for the games; and the Information Diffusion Systems (IDS), which provides competition results and other information to athletes, judges and media.
Atos is the recipient of the world's largest sports-related IT contract, awarded by the International Olympic Committee, in a deal that covers the 2004 Olympics in Athens, the 2006 Winter Olympics in Torino, Beijing 2008, the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics, and the 2012 summer Games in London, where Hyron will be Atos' chief integrator.