IT planning for the Games began in 2003 with the creation of a master plan. Forty to 50 percent of systems planning is carried over from one Olympics to the next, and then adapted to local conditions. In 2004, Hore and his team began designing the fully redundant systems, determining their requirements and what would be needed for testing. The following year they concentrated on building the systems and testing facilities so that in 2006 they could begin the two years of trials required by the Olympics committees.

Just as athletes train for years for the Games, IT people test and test again, with 200,000 hours of trials in total. Atos dedicated about 100 people who have done nothing but conduct tests. Some systems, such as those for managing accommodations for athletes, families, and Games personnel, had to be operational three years in advance. The volunteer system needed to go in two years ahead of time.

Ahead of the Olympics, each venue and system handles a test event, usually a national competition or world championship that provides a live environment to put the gear and its operators through their paces. The IOC's sporting federation for each sport must sign off on the test results following its event.

Atos Origin will also hold two full-scale, three-day technical rehearsals prior to the Olympics, simulating operation of the systems and introducing about 700 scenarios to see how the systems and technical personnel respond. Scenarios can include IT-related issues, such as a security breach or a fire in substation, or non-IT issues, like a large number of staff contracting food poisoning and rendered unable to reach their stations. Atos completed the first of these on April 3, declaring it a success. The second rehearsal is this week, from June 9 to 13.

The Games utilizes two main cores of IT infrastructure, both developed by Atos Origin: the Games Management System (GMS), which supports planning and operation of the Games, including staffing, accommodation, travel, and medical operations; and the Information Diffusion Systems (IDS), which includes timing and scoring by Omega. Atos employed its first version of this system in Barcelona in 1992. For Beijing, the GMS was developed in Java and includes some open source components such as the JBoss application server and Apache Tomcat Web server.

There is also the Commentator Information System (CIS), a Java-based system that provides broadcasters with instantaneous, touch-screen access to results and athlete biographies, so they can relay information about events in progress to audiences worldwide. The IDS also includes the official Web site, operated by Sohu.com, and data feeds for media and sporting federations. The CIS has an additional component this year, the Remote CIS, to offer the same information available at venues in offsite locations, including in other countries, for broadcasters and news outlets internationally.

In designing both systems, Hore said it was important to maintain "a core that is strong, reliable and robust." Their main choice was Unix, although Hore said the choice was neither exclusive nor a rejection of any other operating system. "We're not using any Linux in Beijing. We may use it in the future, but we are not using it today," he said. "It's what's the best at the time we make the decision," which was four or five years ago. For that reason, Windows Vista is not used in the Olympic systems, although XP appears on many desktops.

Lenovo has provided 10,000 computers including KTS 660 desktops; ThinkPad T60 and E680 laptops; 5,000 results terminals, split evenly between the CIS and the Games intranet; 4,000 printers; and 1,000 servers, including models R520, G4Y, R630, and R650.

If the swimming venue is the Water Cube, then the Digital Headquarters (DHQ), the Olympic IT hub, can only be called the Borg Cube. A charcoal gray building at the northwest corner of the Olympic Park, its few windows, most of which appear on the building's east side, face both the Water Cube and the Bird's Nest, the Beijing Games' iconic stadium, providing unparalleled views.

In addition to housing the desktop hardware used by each of the 28 sports during the testing phase, DHQ is also home to a 300-square-meter datacenter, one of two used to handle the Olympics data. A second, identical datacenter is maintained at an undisclosed location, for redundancy and security. After testing is completed this month, much of the equipment will move to the respective venues for each sport. Each venue is designed to function independently, Hore said.