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Published on April 5, 2008

It's a critical mission, since the 16-day competition from August 8-24 cannot be postponed, with the opening ceremony fixed for August 8.

"About 4,000 people will be working on IT and related systems during the Games," said Hore, the chief integrator from France-based Atos Origin, the firm officially contracted to manage the technology side of the Olympics.

The Atos-led consortium, which includes Lenovo of China, Acer of Taiwan, China Telecom and Samsung, is tasked with ensuring that there is no down-time for the competitions, which will take place at six different venues across China.

Among the most talked-about venues are the US$423-million National Stadium, better known as the "Bird's Nest", and the $100 million National Aquatic Centre, better known as the "Water Cube".

Both facilities have daring and inspiring architecture, making them likely to be Beijing's new icons after the Games are finished.

To ensure that the Games will survive any hitches, Hore said the 10-firm IT consortium will conduct around 200,000 hours of  rehearsals, simulations and other security tests to avoid potential threats which may disrupt the event prior to the opening ceremony.

In terms of IT infrastructure, the data network will have about 1,000 servers, 1,000 network and security devices, 10,000 computers, 4,000 printers and about 4,800 result system terminals.

In addition there will be 2,500 terminals for commentator information and another 2,500 units for Intranet.

Hore, an Australian, said about 10,000 athletes from around the world will compete for Olympic medals in 28 sports with 38 disciplines, while about 20,000 media representatives will cover the events.

"We also expect about 70,000 volunteers to work during the Games. Overall, there should be about 4 billion viewers of the telecasts worldwide, mostly via TV, while the Internet will also be a fast-growing medium.

"Most importantly, the Games are fixed, so there is no second chance. We'll have to be 100 per cent ready. Basically, we look at information security and operations readiness.

"Still, there are real-time risks and we must be prepared for them. The whole system is a mix of technology, process and people, designed to meet such challenges like diffusing real-time results of, say, 25 sports, simultaneously to all the media outlets as well as participants, plus some real-time statistics such as records of athletes and personal information," said Hore.

On the risk of terrorist and other attacks during the Games, he said one measure is to use RFID (radio frequency identification) tags on all the 200,000 accredited persons who will participate in the Games, as well as on all tickets so that genuine ID card-holders and ticket-holders could be verified at all times.

On cyber attacks during the Games, in which the official website could be hacked or defaced, he said there is such a concern, so the consortium has been working closely with the organising committee to thwart those possibilities.

Nophakhun Limsamarnphun

nop1122@yahoo.com