IT on track for 2004 Olympic Summer Games in Athens

 The olympian task of developing and implementing the IT infrastructure for the 2004 Olympic Summer Games in Athens is proceeding at an athletic pace, as the Aug. 13 inauguration of the world’s biggest sporting event approaches.

SchlumbergerSema, the games’ lead IT aggregator, already broke a record when it and the International Olympic Committee announced in September that for the first time in Olympic Games history, all critical IT functions were ready for testing during live events one year prior to the start of the games.

“We’re using these months we have left to continue to rehearse and test, try out what-if scenarios, test again. We’re basically in full-testing mode,” said Claude Philipps, SchlumbergerSema’s chief technology integrator of the 2004 Olympic Games, during a recent interview. Testing and integration is being done at a computer lab which has been operational in Athens since November 2002.

SchlumbergerSema, under contract with the International Olympic Committee as lead IT aggregator for four Olympic Games — the winter games in Salt Lake City (2002) and in Turin, Italy (2006), and the summer games in Athens (2004) and in Beijing (2008) — is in charge of IT planning, project management, systems integration, software development and IT security, said Philipps. “And during the games themselves we move into operational mode, leading all IT operations,” he said.

SchlumbergerSema is coordinating the work with about 10 other secondary IT vendors, such as Eastman Kodak Co., Xerox Corp., Swatch AG, Dell Inc. and Sun Microsystems Inc. During the games, SchlumbergerSema will oversee an IT staff of almost 4,000 people.

SchlumbergerSema, which by all accounts developed a solid IT infrastructure and ran a very effective IT operation at the Salt Lake City winter games, faces the challenge of duplicating that success but in an event that is much larger in scope.

The Athens games will feature 28 sports organized into 37 disciplines and 300 events to be held at 35 competition venues. That compares with seven sports, 15 disciplines and 78 events in 10 competition venues in Salt Lake City. About 10,500 athletes are expected in Athens, while about 2,400 participated in Salt Lake City. The IT operation is also much bigger, with almost twice as many servers, printers and PCs, and almost three times as many IT staffers involved at games time.

Another curve ball SchlumbergerSema is dealing with is its sale to a new parent company. New York-based Schlumberger Ltd. announced in September that French computer services company Atos Origin SA had agreed to buy the core IT services activities of SchlumbergerSema, a deal that is on track to be finalized in January. However, SchlumbergerSema doesn’t expect the deal to have any adverse effect on the Olympic Games IT work.

“The whole Major Events division of SchlumbergerSema will become Atos Origin when the deal is complete in January 2004. This will not affect the preparation of the games as the team that is in place will be exactly the same,” the company said in a statement sent to the IDG News Service via e-mail.

When the opening ceremony kicks off, a massive IT and telecommunications infrastructure will be on the ground to serve the about 200,000 accredited Olympic Games participants, such as athletes, trainers, competition officials, journalists and games staff.

The IT and telecom infrastructure will include a dedicated and secure network connecting 60 competition and noncompetition venues with key IT support sites, such as a technology operations center that will be the IT command center during the event, and two redundant data centers, a primary and a back up one, Philipps said. This network isn’t linked to the public Internet to protect it from any possible external attacks. Access to the public Internet will be provided through a secondary network used for noncritical administrative tasks, he said.

The hardware infrastructure will include about 10,000 PCs, 400 Unix servers, 450 Intel-based servers, 13,000 cell phones, 23,000 landline phones, 2,500 intranet terminals, 2,000 printers, 2,000 fax machines and printers and 9,000 two-way radios.

The telecom infrastructure is very good in Athens, he said. “About 90 percent of the necessary infrastructure was already in place,” he said. And most of the events will be held in or near Athens, which also helps, Philipps said. “The games are more compact around the city” unlike, for example, the Salt Lake City games, which involved laying down telecom equipment in mountains where there was none, he said.

Two key sets of applications are involved: the Games Management Systems (GMS) applications, which are ready and in use, and which are designed to automate logistics tasks, such as accreditation, transportation, arrivals and departures and accommodations; and the Info Diffusion Systems applications, which will be completed this month and which will be used during the games to deliver real-time event results, scores and other information to journalists, officials, coaches and other accredited staff.

A key part of the GMS application set is the Accreditation system (ACR) for controlling access to venues. ACR combines physical ID badges, a scanning system and back-office database applications linked to games’ IT network. It will be used to manage the registration process and establish which areas each accredited person can access, among other things.

The International Olympic Committee has been pleased with SchlumbergerSema’s work for the Athens games. “We have been very impressed with Schlumberger consistently meeting all deadlines,” said Philippe Verveer, director of technology for the International Olympic Committee, in a statement in September.