One Year To Go: PyeongChang 2018 Winter Olympics Will Be First ‘All Cloud’ Games

The 2018 Winter Olympic Games in PyeongChang, South Korea will start exactly one year’s time and will be the first edition of any Olympics to move all critical applications to the cloud.

Until now, organisers of many multi-sport events have eschewed cloud because of security and stability concerns but Atos, the official IT partner of the Olympics, used cloud for some services such as the accreditation and volunteering platforms at Rio 2016.

Now it is ramping up these efforts, building virtualised systems for all 12 venues at PyeongChang 2018. Previously, physical individual IT environments would have had to be built at each location, but the cloud allows for remote management and testing.

Olympics cloud

Not only does this have obvious cost and environmental benefits, it also allows organisers to simulate any environment as though they were actually in South Korea.  Atos also claims the cloud-hosted results system will deliver data to the world’s media within 0.3 seconds.

System testing is carried out via Atos facilities in Madrid and Barcelona, which will support the Technology Operations Centre in PyeongChang. This configuration will also be replicated at the 2020 Summer Games in Tokyo and the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing.

“One year away from the Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games PyeongChang 2018 and we are confident that the technology is right on track,” claimed Patrick Adiba, chief commercial officer for Olympics & Major Events at Atos. “Performing all the testing remotely via the Atos Cloud strengthens our motivation to deliver our personal best to ensure a successful Games in 2018.”

“We are dedicated to make the 2018 Winter Games the most digital Games ever and are thrilled to be working with Atos,” declared Hee-beom Lee, president of the PyeongChang 2018 Organising Committee.

Atos has served as an official Olympic partner since the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Games and was instrumental in the delivery of London 2012. However its involvement in the Paralympic Games has been questioned by critics of the fit for work’ disability and work capability assessment.

The company exited that contract a year early in 2014, just weeks after the 2014 Sochi Winter Games.

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