Olympics IT systems pass their first test

The first technical rehearsal for the IT systems of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, featuring a run-through of more than 100 scenarios, has been completed.

The monumental task of building and managing the IT for the Olympics­ involving 4,000 IT staff, 10,000 computers and 1,000 servers ­ is now moving from testing to operational stage.

The rehearsal, involving 600 staff, was mainly conducted in the testing lab but also included four sporting event venues. Simulated problems included how the system would cope with competitors being disqualified.

Atos Origin, worldwide IT partner of the Olympic Games, is now in the process of freezing software and architecture as the cut-off point for development approaches.

Freezing will be complete before the second technical rehearsal, which will include most Olympic venues, in the second week of June.

“There’s huge attention to detail and constant monitoring,” said Patrick Adiba, executive vice president, Olympic Games and major events at Atos Origin.

“You must always anticipate before the games start. You always have to re-adjust, knowing that changing the date is not an option,” he said.

“We think about all kinds of scenarios and ask: ‘If it was a real game, would we be ready?’.”

A large part of the testing takes place in the integration labs, where experts establish how the systems would perform in a real games environment, by testing factors such as load, failover, stability and stress.

“We run the systems at the loads expected in the games to see if the systems can meet this,” said Jeremy Hore, Atos Origin’s chief integrator for the project.

“Then we increase this by up to 10 times. If we think the factor of safety is not enough, we go back and optimise the software.”