WITH just two days to go before Singapore's first ever global sporting event - the 2010 Youth Olympic Games (YOG) - begins, the information and communication technology (ICT) systems that monitor the Games will be as closely watched as the athletes.

In fact, most athletes will play hard but still lose, but none of the ICT systems can lose at any time during the 13 days of the Games, from Aug 14-26. 'This IT project is the most complex ICT project for a sporting event ever undertaken in Singapore,' says Patrick Adiba, Atos Origin's CEO for major events.

'It includes 2,000 computers, 250 computer servers, and 1,200 network devices spread across 35 competition and non-competition venues.' Managing a highly complex endeavour such as the Olympic Games is in fact an Atos Origin speciality.

The company has handled ICT integration at every Olympic and Winter Olympic Games since 2002: Salt Lake City (2002), Athens (2004), Turin (2006), and Beijing (2008). It has also won contracts to handle ICT integration for the Winter Olympics in Vancouver (2010) and Sochi in Russia (2014), as well as the Olympics in London (2012) and Rio de Janeiro (2016). 'We leveraged our experience in providing the IT systems for all the Olympic Games since the first one that we did at the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics in 2002,' Mr Adiba says. This is to ensure that the IT systems are developed, tested, secured and operationalised for this mega-event in Singapore.'

The Singapore 2010 IT systems will be operated by 2,300 ICT professionals and volunteers. Of these, about 160 will monitor the systems in the TOC (Technology Operations Centre) which is the control and command centre of the whole IT operation. The technology consortium for the 2010 YOG has 11 technology partners, including Acer, Omega, Panasonic, Samsung and SingTel (Singapore Telecommunications).