IBM Sets New Internet Records at 1998 Nagano Olympic Winter Games
Technology Application Unmatched in Size, Scope and Complexity
Nagano, Japan (February 23, 1998) – Nagano Olympic Winter Games, making the just-completed Olympic Games the largest, most comprehensive, most heavily-used Internet-based technology application in history.
The Winter Games’ official website, powered by IBM, registered an unprecedented total of nearly 650 million hits from around the world during the 16-day event — compared to 187 million for the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Summer Games.
Another milestone was set on Day 14 (Friday, February 20) at 9 p.m. (Japan Standard Time) during two simultaneous high-profile events — gold medal competition in women’s figure skating and the semi-final ice hockey game between Russia and Finland. Avid Olympic fans in the United States and Europe helped drive the traffic on the website to a world-record rate of 103,429 hits per minute as they turned to the Web for more information.
This surpassed the record set only three days earlier, on Day 11 of the competition, when Japan won the K120 ski jumping gold medal. Within minutes of the winning jump at midday, traffic on the website soared to a world-record rate of 98,224 hits per minute.
“Technology did win gold in Nagano,” said Francois Carrard, Director General of the International Olympic Committee, at an on-site press conference. “I want to offer a special emphasis and thanks to IBM.” Mr. Carrard also characterized the Winter Games here as “the games of high technology, with the human touch.”
Altogether a total of more than 4.5 terabytes — 4.5 trillion bytes (or characters of information) — of data were processed. This vast amount of information, an amount greater than all of the text contained in the U.S. Library of Congress, was used not only by countless fans around the world via the Internet, but also by over 82,000 accredited, on-site members of the Olympic family (including media, sports federations, National Olympic Committees, and athletes) through the Info ’98 intranet system.
“The big news in Nagano was that IBM’s systems performed flawlessly,” said Walter Bohlin, Director of Results for the Olympic Radio and Television Organization (ORTO), the official Olympic broadcasting group.
“The extensive testing IBM did prior to the Games was critical to its success,” said Ulrich Wehling, Manager, Nordic Combined FIS (Federation of International Skiing).
In addition to providing information on the actual Games, the IBM-powered systems allowed fans around the world to send more than a quarter of a million messages directly to athletes in Nagano via the popular IBM FanMail site, which also supported individual home pages created by over 1,500 athletes during the Games. Meanwhile the Info ’98 intranet service of Olympic results, news and e-mail for members of the Olympic community recorded more than six million transactions, demonstrating how organizations can use the Internet for collaboration and sharing information.
IBM, the Worldwide Information Technology Partner for the Nagano Olympic Winter Games and the 2000 Sydney Olympic Summer Games, created an unprecedented network computing technology application in Nagano, seamlessly integrating the Results System, Info ’98, the Official Nagano Web site, the Commentator Information System, Games Management Systems and the World News Press Agency system. These systems were supported by over 800 on-site IBM specialists, drawn from 17 countries.
“The Olympic Games can be compared to a highly diversified business with over 80,000 employees attempting to integrate information technology from different suppliers across all business functions,” said Tom Furey, General Manager, Worldwide Olympic Technology, IBM. “Our extremely successful implementation in Nagano demonstrates the scalability, security, collaboration, and connectivity that form the essential foundation for businesses wanting to tap the enormous potential of e-business.”
Source: IBM