Today, IT security plays a crucial role in the Olympic Games. Atos Origin, which has worked on three Olympics since 2002 and is the worldwide IT partner of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), currently designs, builds and operates the IT project for the Beijing 2008 Olympics.

What would be the greatest IT challenges for the Beijing Olympics, and how would the organizer guarantee security during the Games? In a recent interview with Beijing Review reporter Chen Ran, Patrick Adiba, Executive Vice President of Olympics and Major Events of Atos Origin, talked about the latest developments on the Beijing Olympics IT project.

Beijing Review: What role will Atos Origin play in the Beijing Olympics IT project?

Patrick Adiba: We are the systems integrator, and we do the entire project management for all the technology. Everything related to information technology in the Games is our responsibility.

For example, we provide Games Management Systems (GMS) for the IOC and the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad (BOCOG); we provide major components of the software like Core Games Systems (CGS including accommodation, staffing, medical encounters, etc.) and Information Diffusion Systems (IDS to collect and distribute real-time event results and rankings) that run through the Olympic networks; we also integrate and operate hardware, network and infrastructure in cooperation with other partners, etc. All in all, we ensure accurate, real-time delivery of competition results to billions of people around the world, and protect the IT infrastructure and network against uncontrolled phenomena that may impact the operation of the Games.

Since the Olympic IT project is far from a normal IT project, the deadline is non-negotiable, and there are no second chances: everything must work, from the opening ceremony on August 8, 2008, right to the end.

What is the biggest challenge at the Beijing Olympics in terms of technology?

Actually, our initial work with the BOCOG started in 2003. The Beijing Olympics will be the largest sport event ever in the world. It will be held in seven cities in more than 60 competition and non-competition venues. There will be 28 sports, 37 disciplines, and 302 events. More than 10,000 athletes, 15,550 media, and 70,000 volunteers will be involved in it, which means that the accreditations issued will be over 200,000.

To address the above-mentioned numbers, we will provide more than 10,000 PCs, 1000 servers, 1000 network equipment, and more than 50 software applications in cooperation with other partners.

The main difference between the Beijing Olympics and the previous three Olympics (Salt Lake City, Athens and Torino) we worked on, is that the scope of the Beijing Olympics is wider -- the most distant venue of the 2008 Olympics is Hong Kong, 3.5 hours away by air.

For us, the technology provider, it is a big challenge because we need to give the same service everywhere, within Beijing and the other co-host cities. It's difficult for us in terms of providing the same support service, since communication should be exactly the same. So, a wider scope is the most important challenge for us.

We are starting the testing phase after planning, designing and building phases. We do many types of testing: system tests, integration tests, acceptance test from the sport federations, for they come and tell us whether the tests correspond to the rule of the sport, and test events. We have a smaller game team in "Good Luck Beijing" test events, and many people join in from Vancouver and London, host cities for the next two Olympics we will cooperate with. During the events we deploy the Olympic system, so that we can test it.