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Technology has come to play a critical role in most parts of our lives. Likewise, the upcoming London Olympic Games are banking heavily on technology to deliver a world-class sports event. The huge IT system that will be used to support the event has been tested for a whole plethora of potential failures and has just completed its first technical rehearsal.

Just to give you an idea of the sheer size of the IT system that will be used for London Olympic Games 2012, it comprises of 900 servers, 1,000 network and security devices and more than 10,000 computers! All the venues for the Olympic Games are connected through a high-speed fiber optic supporting up to 60 GB of data transmission per second.

The company that is taking care of all the technical details for the Olympic games is Atos. Atos has extensively tested the technical system to ensure that if any failure occurs during the event, it may not compromise any important bit of data. During the mock rehearsals, a number of failure scenarios are staged so as to see if the system can stand them and still work smoothly without going down. These failure range from the ordinary unplugged cables to major, catastrophic failures.

Given the significance of the event and its scope, it is understandable that the organizers want the IT system to be supportive at all costs during the event. After all, it is the technical system that collects results, compiles them and relays them to the rest of the world during Olympic Games. According to the chairman of London Olympic Games 2012, Sebastian Coe, ‘Everything must perform seamlessly and Atos’ business technologists, like the athletes, must be ready from the first moment to strive for their personal best. With the first operational readiness test now complete, the final preparations for the Games are well underway.’

And by the way, Atos has more rehearsals scheduled just ahead of the games to check for one last time if there are any potential failures in the system.

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