IT Consultant Extends Green Olympics Contract

IT consultant Atos Origin has announced that it will continue to provide technology support to the Olympics beyond the London games.

In a statement released this week, Atos announced that its contract with the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has been extended to to include the Sochi Olympic Winter Games in 2014 in Russia, and the 2016 Olympics.

The agreement extends what Atos describes as “the largest sports related information technology contract ever awarded”.

“Atos Origin, our long-term partner, is the brains behind the technology operations for the Olympic Games, consistently delivering high-quality services on schedule. The Beijing Olympic Games were spectacular and Atos Origin provided a crucial role in ensuring the success of the event from a technological perspective, and in making sure that the IT systems functioned perfectly. We are confident that Atos Origin will once again deliver an outstanding job for future Games”, said Jacques Rogge, president of the International Olympic Committee.

Atos has made much of its attempts to make sure the technology provided to the London Olympics is as sustainable as possible. In March Atos announced technologies such as server virtualisation will be used to improve the efficiency of the IT systems required for the games and help cut the amount of hardware required compared to the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

“London 2012 will leverage a number of technology innovations to improve access to information and deliver the most sustainable Olympic Games yet,” said Michele Hyron, chief integrator at Atos Origin for London 2012.

But despite the commitment to sustainable IT, the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (LOCOG) revealed earlier this month that it was not able to make use of open source technology because it felt it was too high risk given the tight deadlines for the London games.

Speaking at the Green IT 09 conference in London, Gerry Pennell, chief information officer of LOCOG said that he was unable to explore the potential of open source as a more energy and financially efficient alternative to proprietary platforms due to the issue of application compatibility.

“My primary driver here is to deliver the Olympics and that means using proven applications software and by and large that application software does not run on open standards – there are some exceptions to that we are running a little bit of Linux but by and large it is Windows orientated,” he said.