Atos: Lending extra edge to the Games

Bourigeaud is chairman and CEO of Atos Origin, the French company that is Europe’s largest software producer, with annual revenue touching $6 billion. Bourigeaud is in Athens to focus on a project that, he says, is a very important, very prestigious but very small part of our business. Two years ago, his company signed a contract worth several million dollars with the IOC to run infotech operations at four Olympic Games from Salt Lake 2002 to Beijing 2008.

The Olympics are not a project as Bourigeaud says, where you can tell your client that there’s been a delay of a few minutes. “Before the Games, we had 200,000 hours of tests.” Atos Origin is responsible for providing visuals and graphics, updating results, and results networks running and ensuring electronic security. “We are responsible,” says a company technologist, “for 4,500 hours of live competition feed”.

For a start, it has devised 200,000 rectangular cards, roughly six inches by four inches which are worn by athletes, officials, accredited journalists and Olympic staff. These cards, innocuous as they may look, are mini-technology hubs. Each of them, says an Olympic official, has 10 hi-tech security features e-written into it.

The network Atos Origin is manning in Athens is not the world’s largest. That still belongs to the US Army, smiles a company engineer, but is huge by any scale: 10,500 computers, 900 servers, 36,000 phones, 9,000 two-way radios. To prepare for the Games, Atos Origin moved 200 engineers to Athens two years ago. At present, it has 3,400 people working here. This represents, says a company technologist, the world’s most complex IT network and systems management deployment of the year.

Bourigeaud explains that: Security is the key. For every plan A, there has to be a plan B. We cannot go wrong. The company has a massive technology facility in the basement of its Athens office. It is believed the company has more than just one back-up. Atos Origin’s Barcelona centre, where much of the software for the Olympics was custom-written, is said to be ready to take charge should there be a threat to the Athens HQ. Atos Origin has a strong India connection, having set up shop in the country 10 years ago. It employs 700 people at its BPO and systems integration units in Mumbai and Kolkata. While no Olympic-related software work was done in India, four engineers from the Mumbai office are in Athens for the Olympics.

“The 2006 football World Cup in Germany is a client. The Commonwealth Games and Asian Games, Bourigeaud says, are potential markets”. There’s nothing bigger, though, than the Olympics. “In November, we move to Beijing,” Bourigeaud says, “to begin work on the 2008 Games.” Will some of the programmes for China’s Games be designed at the Atos Origin units in India? “We will optimise use of resources,” he says.