Rising to an 'Olympian' challenge

Providing the information backbone for the ongoing Olympic Games is one of the biggest logistic challenges for the IT industry - and not surprisingly it has been entrusted to IBM. But sadly, commercial logic has dictated that the Internet has been virtually shut out. Anand Parthasarathy reports on the mixed messages from Sydney.

IT WAS the best of times, it was the worst of times.... It was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair...' The opening phrases of Charles Dickens' novel highlighted the sharp contrasts between two cultures at a pivotal moment in history. Ironically 140 years after ``A Tale of Two Cities'' appeared, it is a crucial moment once more - for a trans-national technology, rather than for a nation - and the sharp contrasts are being played out this week in one city - Sydney - which is playing host to the Olympic Games.

The logistic challenge of providing the information backbone for this event is awesome: 300 events in 28 sports, in 17 days; 200 participating nations; over 10,000 participating athletes, 15,000 media representatives, over 200,000 coaches, officials and volunteer staff - and worldwide, an estimated 3.5 billion sports fan eager for news of the action.

Not surprisingly, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has opted to tap the talents of an old hand at this game - IBM - which is the designated Information Technology partner for the Sydney 2000 Olympics, and also a key sponsor.

The world's number one computer company has overall responsibility for the official Sydney Games website, as well as for the technology, direction, architecture, operation and hosting of computer systems for the logistical management of the events and the swift dissemination of results.

To this end IBM has deployed 540 servers - most of them their top of the line RS/6000 SP super computers - as well as 7300 PCs, 845 network switches, carrying 10 million lines of coding.

The applications have been organized in four modules:

The Games Information Retrieval System known as INFO is an intranet, offering data on all aspects of the Games: event schedules, results, historical data, athlete biographies, news and weather.

It includes an email facility for members of the Olympic family: athletes, officials and media. Over 2000 workstations and infokiosks have been distributed throughout the Olympic Village and competition venues.

The official Internet website of the Sydney Games ( www.olympics.com) is expected to receive several billion hits over the 17 days of the event. Services available at the site include realtime results, score boards, still photos, medal tallies, 3-D tours of the venues, interactive e-commerce features on travel, accommodation and ticketing and a special educational section for children. An array of Games merchandise is on sale at the site. The functions are supported by 4 RS/6000 SP servers, backed by IBM's DB2 Universal Data Base (UDB) and Lotus/Domino server-client software.

A separate website has been created to handle global fan mail to athletes ( www.ibm.com/fanmail). While in Sydney, athletes can respond and also create personal web pages in the CyberShack, a multilingual pavilion that has been set up. The website will also allow users to order a daily emailed newsletter customised to their interests , created by Lifeminders Inc an Internet provider company.

The Games Management module looks after the logistics of running this mega event including applications like accredition, medical incident tracking, arrivals and departures, accommodation, ticketing and transportation. In all 260,000 athletes, coaches, officials, volunteers and media representatives are expected to participate- and servicing their needs is the primary task of this module.

`Swiss Timing' is the official timekeeper for the Games. IBM will capture the results at each venue, process them and distribute them in near realtime over scoreboards, Internet and through the media. There are two distinct components: venue results application and the central results system.

A special feature is the Commentator Information System, a dedicated LAN which customises results and data for TV and radio broadcasters using IBM PC 300 GL hardware and O/S2 warp software. The system is hosted on an S/390 Sysplex transaction processing server.

Cross platform management between these four application modules is being accomplished by the use of Tivoli technology management software. `A waste of Internet?'

While all this formidable technology is a tribute to what cutting-edge IT can handle today, when it comes to mega event management, the Sydney Olympics also marks a somewhat sadder development: the deliberate and cold blooded shutout of the Internet as a fast - and free - purveyor of rich multimedia information in real time.

The crucial word here is 'free'. Internet knows no geographical boundaries. It provides the viewer with choice and it is substantially free. All three features combined, create a frightening proposition for the Olympic organisers; because ever since the 1984 Los Angeles Games, massive sponsorship and broadcasting rights have formed the cornerstone of the event's economics.

The IOC has already sold the key US TV broadcast rights to NBC for $ 705 million and other broadcasters ( including Doordarshan) have together shelled out a further $ 615 million for the right to carry TV coverage within their territories. IBM, Coca Cola and Visa have provided another $ 1.25 billion in sponsorship.

Because New York is 15 hours behind Sydney, NBC will tape many of the events and further delay showing them to American audiences till their own evening prime time when maximum advertising mileage can be obtained. This could be up to a day late. We are much better off in India, being only 4 1/2 hours behind Sydney. But to protect the huge investments of TV broadcasters, the IOC has decreed that there are to be no live telecasts on the Internet, no Net radio commentaries, not even taped video highlights - till the TV companies have milked the events by showing the footage on their captive networks. Some subscribers of Cable- based and broadband Internet can hope to see Games video but only after the national TV broadcaster in their countries has broadcast it.

The single most exciting technological advance since the last Olympics has been the ease with which live Net broadcasts can now be sent across the globe. But the hyper commercialisation of the Olympics has meant that instead of embracing technology that will bring the magic of the Games to millions of fans worldwide - live and almost free - the organisers are behaving as if they are confronted by a monster that will devour them. Indeed the IOC has already sold TV rights to NBC for $ 3.5 billion, up to and including the 2008 Olympics and theoretically no live Internet coverage will be available till then.

But will technology halt because money power decrees it so? It remains to be seen whether the embargo on Internet broadcast of coverage can be sustained during the Sydney Olympics. How can the organisers prevent a fan sitting in the stands from shooting with his handycam and sending the video to a personal webpage, over a WAP enabled mobile phone - to share with his friends?

As the Napster and MP3 controversy has shown, the Internet community does not always accept the traditional notions of copyright and intellectual property.

Wisely, the IOC has set up a meeting in Lausanne, Switzerland in December where sports, media and Internet experts will try and hammer out a consensus on what role Internet should play in future events like the Olympics.

In a sharp commentary on these developments Bernhard Warner of ``The Industry Standard'' recalls the Winter Olympics of 1956, when the first live transmission was carried by Italian TV - amidst controversy. The then IOC President Avery Brundage said:'We have done well without TV for 60 years and we shall certainly do so for the next 60 years''.

Famous last words - as far as television is concerned. A similar fate appears almost inevitable for Internet. The Sydney 2000 Olympics Games, may be the last occasion when one could ban a frontline technology because it is too good at what it does.

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