London Olympics’ IT More “Sustainable” Than Beijing

The London Olympics will use technologies such as server virtualisation 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.

In a statement released this week, lead IT consultant for the London Games, Atos Origin said it is working with London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (LOCOG) to evaluate the use of technologies such as virtualisation.

“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.

In its annual report on the 2012 budget released in February, the UK Government said that the projected budget for just the Olympic stadium had increased by £43m to £547m during 2008. The original budget for the 2012 Games was £3.4bn but this has now increased to around £9.6bn.

Discussing the information provision to journalists, and internet and TV viewers, Atos said that technologies such as the Olympic Data Feed to consolidate all the data feeds to the newswires, websites and London 2012 intranet into a single channel which it claims will provide a “more sustainable and efficient service”.

“We are expecting to increase access to the Commentator Information Systems from outside the host city, enabling journalists to access the rich information from the offices in their home countries to reduce costs and the carbon footprint,” said Hyron.

Atos also claims that its Remote INFO, a service which provides access to the London 2012 intranet, could also be used to help reduce the seven million sheets of paper that were printed in Beijing by providing the competition schedules and results directly to journalists’ computers.