Subject: [NEXTEL-1] WiFi excluded from summer Olympics

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 11 Feb 2004 16:17:46 -0500

WiFi excluded from summer Olympics

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has deemed WiFi security not robust enough to qualify for this summer's Olympic Games in Athens. Claude Philipps, chief technology integrator for Schlumberger, which has the contract to organize IT resources for the Olympics, said that "The IOC thinks -- and we agree -- that the security is not major enough to be used for such an event. I think the trend is in favor of wireless, and we'll be able to do that at some future games, but not now." Concern about security was also the reason WiFi was excluded two years ago from the IT network at the 2002 winter games in Salt Lake City. One group of competitors, biathletes, were allowed to use WiFi, and split times were detected and relayed to their coaches by wireless.

=======================================================================

Security fears mean Wi-Fi won't star at the Olympics

Graeme Wearden
ZDNet UK
July 11, 2003, 15:28 GMT

Tell us your opinion

The International Olympic Committee doesn't believe wireless security is good
enough for
their IT set-up at Athens in 2004

The team designing and implementing the IT infrastructure for the 2004 Olympic
Games will not be
incorporating Wi-Fi into the networks they are building due to security
concerns.

In an interview with News.com, Claude Philipps -- the man leading the
project -- explained that the decision has been taken not to use 802.11b
because those involved believe the technology is not secure enough.

"The IOC (International Olympic Committee) thinks -- and we agree -- that
the security is not major enough to be used for such an event. I think the
trend is in favour of wireless, and we'll be able to do that at some future
games, but not now," said Philipps, chief technology integrator for
Schlumberger, which has the contract to organise IT resources for the
Olympics.

Philipps explained that security is a top priority for the Games organisers, as
the networks will be carrying very sensitive information about both athletes
and VIPs attending the competition.

Wi-Fi was also excluded from the IT network at the 2002 winter games in
Salt Lake City for the same reason. Despite that decision, it was still used by
one group of competitors -- the biathletes, whose split times were detected
and relayed to their coaches by wireless.

Back in 2002, reports claimed that the IOC had decided to give Wi-Fi the
cold shoulder until at least 2008 due to concerns over both security and
performance. This was subsequently denied.

Setting up the IT systems for the 2004 Olympics is a mammoth task, made
more challenging by the fact that the delivery deadlines are effectively fixed
in stone. There's no opportunity to push back delivery dates -- everything
has to be ready before the event begins.

The system being built by Philipps' team will include some 10,000 desktop
PCs and 850 servers. To avoid the possibility of a glitch in the Greek
electricity network causing chaos, diesel generators are being deployed to
complement uninterruptible power supplies.

There appears to be no place for open-source software either. Instead,
Sun's Solaris operating system is being deployed.

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/business/0,39020645,2137456,00.htm

==========================================================================

Q&A: An IT job of Olympic proportions

David Becker, CNET News.com
CNET News.com
July 11, 2003, 10:50 GMT

Tell us your opinion

The chief technology integrator for the Athens Olympics, Claude Philipps,
reveals some of
the strategies behind one of the world's biggest IT projects

Think you've got a tough IT project to complete? Consider what's on Claude
Philipps' plate.

The job involves managing a network that unites everything from Unix
servers to precision timing devices. After installing several redundant
systems, he must guarantee 24/7 reliability and instantaneous performance
on a tight budget. And just to make things even more interesting, all this
must take place in a capital city with a sometimes shaky power grid.

Welcome to Athens, where Philipps is chief technology integrator for
Schlumberger for the 2004 Olympic Games. The event will mark the second
set of games at which the consulting firm will be responsible for ensuring
that an intimidating grab bag of technology parts works flawlessly together.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) awarded Schlumberger the
contract to manage IT resources for the games after longtime contractor
IBM suffered several embarrassing glitches that led to long delays in
communicating results for key events at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta.

Schlumberger, which got through last year's winter games in Salt Lake City
without any major incidents, is on track in Athens, where the IT team
recently ported over all the major processes used at the Utah location. Last
week, the company announced that it implemented an identity and access
management system for the Athens games, combining a physical ID badge
and scanning system with back-office database applications.

Even so, this is one contract where Philipps knows there's no wiggle room
in deadlines. With delivery dates absolutely fixed eight years in advance, he
has to get it right the first time.

"That's the tricky thing about this project -- the dates can't move, as they
often do on other IT projects," Phillips said. "There are no second
chances." Philipps recently spoke with ZDNet UK's sister site CNET
News.com about the truly Olympian nature of the IT challenges associated
with the games.

Q: Can you start by giving us a sense of the size of the Athens work?
A: The scope of what we're doing is that we're providing... key applications,
we're providing integration services, we're working with the IOC and a
consortium of best-of-breed providers in each area. We aggregate all the
equipment, data and network resources together. We rehearse everything
in a huge integration lab we have here. During the games, we lead the IT
partners to run the integration during the games. Basically, we look at the
best way of putting everything together.

How much hardware are we talking about?
We're putting together an architecture that's quite big for a short period, but
that's how it works. We have around 10,000 desktops, 500 laptops, 400
Unix servers, plus another 450 Windows servers.

There are around 16,000 media people, and we provide them with
ready-to-use tools that are focused on real-time results, so they can bring news
to the world as it happens. This
is part of what we call the results system. This is the critical piece that
cannot fail. We have to get it right on the
first try.

How do you make sure that happens?
We spent the last year testing and testing and testing again, rehearsing,
reviewing contingency plans. We go
through a lot of "what if" scenarios -- what if we have a power failure, what if
the network blows, what if the
people cannot show up at the venues because of traffic or whatever? It's all
about contingency plans, putting
together plan B, plan C. For some really critical tasks, we have four or five
backups.

Does that become a bigger challenge in Greece, where the public infrastructure
probably isn't quite as
advanced as Salt Lake City?
It's true. The resources are different from country to country. We're
implementing our own infrastructure, making
sure everything is securely backed up. There are several different lines for
power provisioning. We have UPSs
(uninterruptible power supplies) on site, diesel generators on site. We cannot
afford a power failure.

How does the size of the Athens
projects compare with Salt Lake
City?
The summer games are two to three
times bigger as far the number of
sports, the number of athletes, the
number of media people. As far as
venues, we had about 40 in Salt
Lake City, including 10 competition
venues. We're looking at 70,
including 35 competition venues, in
Athens. We had 2,400 athletes in
Salt Lake City, and we have 10,500
in Athens. There are 37 sports in the
summer game, compared to 15 in
Salt Lake City.

As a good example, one of those
summer sports, track and field, on its
own is bigger than all the winter
sports put together.

So do the IT resources scale up in
relation?
Oh, yes. We had half the number of desktops in Salt Lake City compared to what
we're installing here. There
were about 450 servers in Salt Lake City, compared to the 850 we have here. What
are some of the lessons
you're applying from the winter games?
When the IOC awarded the contract, one of the key things for them was reducing
the cost of putting on the
games, just so it's more affordable to Third World countries. Technology is one
of the big costs of the games,
so reducing the cost was a decision implemented through a knowledge management
programme.

From Salt Lake City on, we tracked everything -- how many people did we hire for
each position, how many
people did we have at any given time? All the information we tracked down, and
after the games we did a
series of after-action reviews where we reviewed all the data...to see what we
could do to make things happen
better and cheaper the next time. We looked at everything -- the starting plan,
the number of volunteers, the
amount of equipment, decisions about tools, decisions about what level of
redundancy was appropriate in each
area.

Are those tough decisions to make, given the reliability demands?
Sure, because you always want to do more. But we found places we could cut back
without compromising
performance. The IT budget for Salt Lake City was around $300m. For the summer
games, we don't have the
budget finalized yet -- but the trend is to go for something very similar, like
$350m even though the amount of
work is two to three times bigger. And we're on track to do that.

You deal with some pretty unusual IT situations. How do you find people who are
expert at networking
precision timing systems with back-end servers, for example?
We use several different levels of skills. We have a team that has Olympics
games experience in several areas
-- technical areas, logistics, etc. And we rely on our partners. For Unix, for
example, Sun is supplying a lot of
talent.

How big a concern is security?
All the Olympics games are very highly visible events. Our goal is to implement
quite strong preventive
measures against any breach of security or denial-of-service attack. We're using
both people awareness and a
good suite of tools that helps us at every level -- from the very technical
level to the managerial level, so
everyone has a good sense what the issues are. This is deployed very early,
because we're dealing with
sensitive information from very early in the process, like private data on
athletes or VIPs.

You decided in Salt Lake City to pass on 802.11 wireless networking support
because of security concerns.
Any change in your position on Wi-Fi? We're doing the same thing in Athens. The
IOC thinks -- and we agree --
that the security is not major enough to be used for such an event. I think the
trend is in favour of wireless and
we'll be able to do that at some future games, but not now.

How did IBM's problems in Atlanta affect the way you're approaching the
Olympics?
I won't comment on IBM's accomplishments previously. But the experiences the IOC
had from that era were
translated in their bid and the contract we have.

The two key aspects we are obliged to meet is to get a good knowledge transfer
to make the games cheaper
and cheaper and to make it more reliable by using mature technology. We're not a
hardware provider. We're
agnostic; we implement whatever technology we need on any hardware. (Editors'
note: Athens Olympics
sponsors include Dell for PCs and Sun Microsystems for servers.)

We're not using the games to showcase any fancy products. We're arranging it to
show we can deliver the job
on time and on target. We're using this quite challenging project to show we can
do this one, and if we can do
a project like this that is quite in front of the world, because no failure is
acceptable, we can do quite a job for
our usual customers.

Are you using any open-source software to cut costs?
No. It's not a religion that we use this or that. Sun is a sponsor and is
providing Solaris (Sun's version of Unix),
so that's what we use. Maybe for the next games we use Linux.

http://insight.zdnet.co.uk/hardware/servers/0,39020445,2137413,00.htm

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