Australian Open learns from Hurricane Irene

Tennis Australia isn't taking any chances with this year's Australian Open, using disaster-recovery and back-up techniques developed by IBM during the onslaught of Hurricane Irene to ensure that this year's Melbourne-based event stays live through any extreme event.

Tennis Australia is keeping its eye on the DR ball for this year's Australian Open.
(Credit: Luke Hopewell/ZDNet Australia)

As Hurricane Irene began to bear down on the US Open in Flushing Meadows, New York, last year, the United States Tennis Association (USTA) put the venue in lockdown for safety reasons in an unprecedented move to protect the safety of players and attendees.

IBM, the official technology partner of four grand-slam tournaments around the world, including the US Open, the Australian Open, Roland Garros and Wimbledon, quickly deployed their new disaster-recovery plan, which included moving out from the venue to a satellite office in New York City.

From New York City, IBM was able to post storm updates and safety information for the tournament on the website without interruption, using its suite of cloud-based technologies until the venue was reopened at 6pm that day. Patrick Childress headed up the project team that was forced to evacuate the US Open as Hurricane Irene approached, and told ZDNet Australia that despite the torrential rain and wind, the team was back onsite at Flushing Meadows and ready to go by 9pm.

Childress said that it was a chance to hone the team's "fire-drill" skills.

"[The USTA] re-opened the venue 6pm Sunday night, and we were back up at 9pm and ready for first ball at 11am the next day. The reason we were delayed mostly is that we couldn't find a cab downtown to take us to the venue, because all the bridges was closed," Childress said.

It was this capability that Tennis Australia wanted for this year's Australian Open.

Tennis Australia's chief information officer, Samir Mahir, told journalists yesterday that working with IBM year after year sees the Australian Open benefit from the latest and greatest in technology and deployment techniques.

"IBM is uniquely positioned to help an event like ours. IBM has been involved with four marquee grand-slam events. We are one of them, and we take advantage of a lot of experience and expertise globally, whether in the US or Australia," he said, adding that this year, cloud-based disaster-recovery plans born from Hurricane Irene preparation had been put in place.

"We've used cloud computing before, but this year, the difference is that we rolled out a few [new] applications, and we enhanced all our disaster recovery. It's very important — based on what happened at the US Open, it was very crucial for Tennis Australia to make sure we have a similar configuration to the Australian Open in 2012," he added.

"We kept the [US Open] in mind, and we worked closely with IBM to include those disaster-recovery plans in 2012. Like any DR plans, you plan for a solution that can allow you to recover your data quickly, and I'm confident we have a good plan in place.

"You always have to be prepared," Mahir said.

Other applications in place for this year's Australian Open include IBM's suite of business-analytics tools used to analyse and predict the outcome of games, based on everything from serve technique, serve speed, play style and forced and unforced errors.

The Australian Open runs through to 29 January.

Luke Hopewell travelled to Melbourne as a guest of IBM.