BEIJING OLYMPICS AND

INFORMATION
TECHNOLOGY
- NANDINI.R.
 BEIJING OLYMPICS AND IT

 Beijing 2008 Olympic Games have been the most

information intensive Olympic Games ever, With
80% more competition data processed for media
and news agencies worldwide.

 Top class athletes from around the world have

broken 43 world records and 132 Olympic records
during the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, while
behind the scenes the IT team led by Atos Origin
has smashed records of its own.
 ATOS ORIGIN

Atos Origin is an international information technology

(IT) services company. Its business is turning client
vision into results through the application of consulting,
systems integration and managed operations. The
company's annual revenues are EUR 5, 4 billion and it
employs over 50,000 people in 40 countries. Atos Origin
is the Worldwide Information. It is a France based
company. Atos Origin is listed on the Paris Euro list
Market and trades as Atos Origin, Atos World line and
Atos Consulting. Philippe Germond is the CEO and
Chairman of Atos Origin.
 ATOS ORIGIN AND BEIJING
OLYMPICS
 The contract Atos Origin has with the International
Olympic Committee (IOC) is the largest IT contract in
sport and Beijing will be the fourth games where the
company has run the IT infrastructure—the first being
the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.

 The Olympics is a hugely high profile event with 3.9

billion people estimated to have watched at least 15
minutes of the last Olympic Games in Athens

 The IT infrastructure has to support three broad areas.

The first is the system through which the organisers and
IOC run the games. This includes accreditation, arrivals,
protocol and staffing.
 IT has to support the transmitting of real-time results as
well as timing and scoring technology—such as the
pressure pads at the end of swimming lanes and the
television graphics they produce.

 Security is a major factor in helping the event and

technology run smoothly and Atos Origin tests its
systems extensively during the preparation period.
 During the event, the infrastructure—which consists of
around 1,000 servers and 10,000 PCs—is centrally
managed and monitored from the technical operation
centre.

 Once the games are over, the team has to take away the
infrastructure and repeat the process again for the next
games
 Atos Origin has successfully delivered the IT
infrastructure that makes the Olympic Games
happen and transmits the results worldwide in
less than 0.3 seconds. The IT team and the scale
of the IT infrastructure has been similar to that in
Athens, yet in comparison to the Athens 2004
Olympic Games, the IT team has:

 Provided the IT systems and software that

processed and activated 70 percent more
accreditations – more than 340,000 in total
 Securely processed more than 80 percent more
competition data for media and news agencies
worldwide – totaling 1.5 million message
 Enabled almost 50 percent more stories to be
published each day in English by the Olympic
News Service – totaling an average of 500 stories
a day. Around half of these have been translated
into French or Chinese

 Added 40 percent more sports disciplines, eight in

total, to the Commentator Information System to
provide broadcasters with more detailed, real-
time information about more sports.
 Supported approximately around 30 percent more hits
on the intranet for the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games –
INFO2008 – averaging around 1.2 million hits each day

 Collected and filtered more than 12 million IT security

events each day to detect any potential security risk for
the Olympic Games IT systems. From these, less than
100 were identified as real issues. All were resolved, so
there was no impact at all on the Olympic Games.
 Project Phases

The Road to Beijing actually began in 2003 with the

development of a Master Plan. Key officials and
technicians from China were then present during the
Athens 2004 Olympic Games and the Design phase
then began, including the defining of business
requirements and the designing of the Systems and
Test Infrastructure.
In 2005, we began the Build phase for the systems
and test facilities and in mid 2006 the Test phase
began in detail covering test events and technical
rehearsals. In fact this continues right up until the
moment the games begin on 8th August, 2008!

 
What is an Olympic IT Project like?

Imagine a company with almost 200,000 employees:

 with 4 billion customers

 printing 25 million pages per week

 in an 24x7 environment
 The company manages the essential feed to the press
worldwide and not only that but some 21,600 journalists
are also in town to capture the scoop!

 We roll out the entire IT infrastructure of the “company”

 We manage an integrated team of more than 4,000 IT
experts from the world’s leading companies, including
Atos Origin Olympics experts and the best Chinese IT
professionals
 We help issue passport-grade badges to all 200,000
accredited “employees”
 Then manage the IT operations for 3 weeks
 Increasing access to real-time Olympic
competition results worldwide
 To increase and improve the competition
information available to audiences around the
globe, Atos Origin introduced a new service for
the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games –the Remote
Commentator Information System.

 It enables commentators to access competition

results from the studios in their home countries
in a fraction of a second via touch screen PCs. It
also provides background information on the
athletes and sports to help them add colour to
their commentaries
 Ensuring accurate results are
delivered worldwide
 Critical to the success of the Olympic Games is
protecting and securing the IT infrastructure
behind it and this is the area where Atos Origin
innovates and invests the most.
 For the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, Atos Origin
implemented the latest security monitoring
solution to filter and prioritize potential IT security
risks to the services, so the team is immediately
notified and can react quickly to any unusual or
unexpected activity.
 Atos Origin’s IT Security methodology and
solutions ensured that there was not a single
incident that impacted the Olympic Games.
HACKERS WERE THWARTED
 Faced with 12 million alerts per day, the team at
the Games' worldwide IT partner, Atos Origin,
used in-house risk-management technology to
reduce the alerts to just 90 critical alarms,
focusing on the most serious risks.

 Honey traps were also used to trap several

hackers, using results terminals with security
holes to lure criminals into attempting to install
applications
 The Atos Origin system used multiple servers to
correlate unexpected incidents on the system to spot
both fast and staggered attempts to hack the network.

 Remaining alarms were then prioritized, based on risk -

for example, if the alarm was on a system at a venue
where an event was taking place or on a key system.

 Automated, real-time security audits also allowed Atos

Origin to examine every new or reconfigured device
connected to the Games' system to check the device
had the proper security settings and antivirus software
installed.
THANK YOU