Photos: The tech timetable to the 2012 Olympics revealed
The countdown is on
The company overseeing the tech for the London 2012 Olympic Games has revealed how it's warming up in preparation for the starter's gun.
A technology roadmap for the Games, released today, details how Atos Origin, the London Olympics IT supplier, and its partners will prepare for 2012, building a network capable of streaming 6GB of sporting results every second to the watching world - the equivalent of the entire contents of Wikipedia every five seconds.
According to the roadmap for the second half of this year, pictured above, Atos Origin will have completed work on the designing and testing of the Games' complex mesh of technology infrastructure and systems by the end of December.
Atos' Michèle Hyron, chief integrator at London 2012, said in a statement: "The technology roadmap for each Games is divided into four phases and we are now close to completing phase one - design of the technology infrastructure and systems that will relay the results to the world in a fraction of a second."
According to Hyron the infrastructure at the 2012 Games will allow Atos to "provide more news from the Games than ever before".
Photo credit: Atos Origin
From July 2010 a web portal will be launched that will allow people to apply to become one of the 70,000 volunteers needed to help stage the Games.
Volunteers will carry out a range of essential tasks, from spectator to language services and medical care.
The 3,500 staff overseeing the IT at the Games will also include some volunteers.
Photo credit: Atos Origin
In September 2010, Atos Origin will begin putting the Games' technology through its paces.
To ensure the hardware and software used by Atos Origin and the other technology companies supplying London 2012 are able to work together, the systems and infrastructure will be subjected to more than 200,000 hours of testing before the Games start on 27 July 2012.
Photo credit: Atos Origin
Next off the starting block will be the opening of the Equipment Deployment Centre, which from February 2011 will oversee the distribution and configuration of the hardware for the Games' 94 UK venues.
The Games' mammoth IT estate will include 900 servers, 1,000 network security devices and 8,000 computers when it is fully deployed.
Photo credit: Atos Origin
Once the hardware is in place, Atos Origin will begin building and testing key systems and infrastructure at the venues, starting around June 2011.
The venues - spread hundreds of miles apart, from the sailing events in Weymouth in Dorset to football events at St James Park in Newcastle - will stage sporting contests ahead of the Olympics to see how systems cope with the stresses of a real life event.
Photo credit: Atos Origin
By 2012 the Games will be on the home straight and February will see the opening of the nerve centre of the Games, the Technology Operations Centre (TOC).
The centre monitors the Games tech 24/7, checking for and fixing any glitches in results systems, drop offs in network bandwidth or security alerts.
The centre will contain more than 200 workstations and banks of screens where staff from Atos Origin and its technology partners will pore over information from the Games' systems.
Later in February, the Games will also launch an accreditation system to control access to the Games for staff and competitors.
Photo credit: Atos Origin
The final technical rehearsal will take place in May 2012, with the Games' opening only a month away.
The rehearsal will simulate the venues' ability to send out results from multiple sporting events simultaneously and trial the busiest days of the Games against hundreds of scenarios. These will include multiple disaster situations, ranging from network disconnections and software bugs to changes to the competition schedule.
In the days before the London 2012 Games open on 27 July, the results system that streams the latest on the Games around the venues and to broadcasters worldwide will become operational.
Photo credit: Atos Origin