Not surprisingly, the information technology (IT) operation at this year’s Olympic Games is impressive, and it will require lots of high-tech support. For example, Lenovo shipped more than 3500 pieces of computing equipment, including servers, desktops, monitors, and notebooks, to the Integration Test Center of the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games as early as last August.
This delivery was followed by a series of tests to see how all of this equipment would work during the 42 sports competitions scheduled during the Games. Lenovo (formerly the IBM Personal Computing Division, but now a Chinese company) has delivered a total of 14,000 pieces of computing equipment for the Beijing Games.
Ericsson, among other companies, has been working with Lenovo to provide mobile broadband modules based on high-speed packet access (HSPA) for Lenovo notebook computers as well. Add it up, and the IT and communications systems at the Beijing Games will cost around $400 million and require the expertise of thousands of IT managers and engineers.
Each sport has been assigned its own set of IT gear. Each of these systems was tested and will be again before the start of the Games. Atos Origin SA was responsible for building the IT systems for recent Olympic Games, and got the same task for the Beijing Olympics. Acer becomes an official, IOC-approved Olympic computer equipment vendor beginning with the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver and for the 2012 Games in London.