Beijing 2008 Olympics IT testing underway

Tests on the IT infrastructure behind the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games begins this month, a full year before the event opens on 8 August 2008.

The systems architecture for Beijing 2008 was finalised last month by the main IT supplier for the Games, Atos Origin, and all the facilities - a PC factory, data centre, integration lab and technology operation centre - are now operational.

An IT team of around 3,500 people, which includes 2,500 volunteers, will be responsible for 10,000 PCs, 1,000 servers, a Games information system and an information diffusion system across seven cities.

Guillaume Huard, sales and marketing director for Olympics and major events at Atos Origin, said: "You have one chance to get it right. There is no second chance. Testing is a big component. You don't want to affect the competition in any way. The testing is intense and takes more than a year."

The testing will include a run-through of 500 possible worst-case scenarios rehearsing every situation that could go wrong, including virus infections and cables being cut but Huard said the biggest threat is still an internal one.

He said: "We have had people trying to print their own accreditation badges, or trying to find their way around the network when they shouldn't."

To minimise this risk all the Olympic volunteers - IT and non-IT - go through rigorous police background checks. In Beijing there will be a total of 70,000 volunteers, filtered down from around five million applications.

But such is the reliability required for the Olympic Games there is little new or cutting-edge technology used.

Huard said: "You have to freeze your solution quite a long time before the event. We are not going for cutting-edge and bleeding-edge technology. It has to be mature, proven, tested technology. You can't take that risk at the Olympics."

There are currently 100 IT staff in Beijing, three-quarters of who are Chinese, and testing begins this month for the IT supporting 12 Olympics events in 11 different venues. Work on the IT infrastructure for the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics is already underway and work on the London 2012 IT systems will begin after Beijing, in November 2008.

Despite the IT skills shortage in the UK, Huard said there will be no shortage of people for the thousands of volunteers needed in London.

He said: "The Olympics only happens through the help of volunteers. I don't think we will have a problem finding people for London. The attraction of the Olympics is such that people take leave from their jobs. It's a great thing on a CV."