Forget Cool--Reliability Reigns At The Olympics

Picture this: U.S. speed skating star and gold-medal hopeful Chad Hedrick crosses the finish line first in the 1,500-meter race at the Olympic Winter Games in Turin, Italy, but a computer fails to register the result. As millions of viewers look on, four years of intense training go down the drain in an unrecorded split second.

Parallel Giant Slalom And Snowboard Cross Run

That kind of nightmare is unlikely, but it could haunt Olympic athletes in the final days leading up to Torino 2006, especially if they know about computer-generated inaccuracies at the 1996 games that forced IBM to issue an apology. And it's just that scenario Olympic organizers hope to avoid as they invest $400 million in IT for the games, with stability and reliability as the guiding principles behind that spending. It's why wireless capabilities will be offered as an add-on to Olympics IT systems but aren't being used in any main systems running the games, and why there's an extensive redundant network in case of power and telephone outages.

It's a mind-set that has required Olympic organizers to resist pressure from tech companies to use the most-up-to-date technologies for important functions. "We're looking to have high quality but mainly a reliable solution," says Enrico Frascari, director of technology for the Turin Organizing Committee. Frascari's approach is similar to one that David Busser took as CIO of the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City. "I like to think we were innovative, but it's not innovation at the cost of additional risk," Busser said in a recent interview. "The systems absolutely, positively have to work."

Web Services In Lead

	Speed Skating Oval

That was four years ago--practically a lifetime in terms of IT--and one area where Frascari is breaking with Busser is Web services. Busser resisted using them because, back then, the concept was too new. Atos Origin, a French services company that ran much of the IT for the 2004 Summer Games and is doing the same in Turin, designed two giant suites of applications for the Winter Olympics--the Games Management and the Information Diffusion systems--that use open standards such as XML so that Web-based apps can rapidly and easily exchange information. Games Management will handle athletes' accreditation, transportation and accommodation schedules, medical reports, and qualification information. It also enforces the protocols that keep the Olympics running on time. Information Diffusion will serve results and athlete information to 2,500 athletes and 10,000 media representatives and provide intranet access to 90,000 people associated with the Olympics.