IBM Pen-Based, Wireless LAN Technology to Speed Olympic Games Results to
Media and Spectators

May 15, 1995 -- The 1996 Centennial Olympic Games -- the largest, most
technically complex sporting event in history -- will feature 26 sports,
37 disciplines (groups of related competitions) and 271 medal events. Most
sporting activities will be centered in and around Atlanta, but some of
the 1996 competition venues will be located in other Georgia cities as
well as Tennessee, Alabama, Florida and Washington, D.C.

Two mission-critical challenges face The Atlanta Committee for the Olympic
Games (ACOG) and information technology sponsor IBM concerning the
delivery of competition results from these local and remote locations:
sub-second speed and uninterrupted service.

To further complicate the issue, Olympic sports come in four categories --
timed, judged, head-to-head and team -- and each has its own design and
technology requirements.

"During the 17 days of the Games, the world will focus on some 10,000
athletes who will pursue the Olympic motto, Citius, Altius, Fortius --
swifter, higher, stronger," says Namik Djumisic, ACOG program director,
Results Services. "Everything concerning the promotion and celebration of
the Games centers around the athletes' performances, and our Results
System instantly will notify media and spectators about current leaders in
all events."

Helping ACOG tie this all together is the Integrated Systems Solutions
Corporation (ISSC), an IBM wholly-owned subsidiary, charged with
developing in partnership with ACOG the Centennial Olympic Games Results
System and integrating major applications.

Information technology for the 1996 Games feature some of the latest
high-capacity data networking, wireless data communication and
client/server (C/S) technologies available in the marketplace. IBM is
assigned to provide the computer hardware and software, the professionals
and the services to integrate all information technology into a smoothly
functioning operation.

To meet the 1996 Olympic Games challenges for data integrity, speed and
reliability, the ACOG/IBM technology team designed the Results System to
allow, for the first time, venue independence should a link to the central
system be broken. The Results System gathers, calculates and tabulates
information from timing, scoring and judging stations, then delivers the
running time data in realtime to the venue scoreboard, Commentator
Information System and the appropriate systems within the venue. Following
validation by the judges, the results data is sent to the mainframe for
distribution to other venues, the printers and worldwide feed to some
15,000 international media representatives.

Wireless LAN Technology Solves Host of Problems

In many sports, an IBM personal computer will interface with timing: IBM
Local Area Network token-ring servers will receive data from IBM personal
computers and SWATCH Timing devices -- in some venues, IBM ThinkPad
computers will be part of a wireless LAN.

"Wireless technology solves a host of problems," explains Ian Rushton, ACOG
Network Architecture manager. "Such as the expense and complexity of
wiring an existing convention center that has pre- and post-Olympic
events, pushing us to set up and tear down in a hurry. Or temporary
facilities like the slalom canoe/kayak event venue on Tennessee's Ocoee
River or the yachting competition off Savannah's coast -- where this kind
of computing won't be required after the 17 days of Olympic Games are
concluded."

Bruce Taylor, Results System IBM project manager, adds, "The IBM pen-based
ThinkPad provides faster, more natural entry of competition statistics.
Pen-based data entry replaces the more traditional use of custom designed
key pads with a limited number of specialized keys -- one keystroke, for
instance, to record a basketball rebound and another to record an assist.

"Using a pen-based system, you also can display the field of play -- a
basketball court for example -- on which the data entry person indicates
which player has an assist or scores from the baseline, or inside the
paint," Taylor explains. "Our data entry people write on a score pad much
like the one a coach or scorer uses. It's a much more natural interface
than a keyboard for those who are more sports-oriented than technology
oriented."

Multi-tier, Multi-platform Client/Server Architecture

To provide enterprise-wide integration and data synchronization, IBM and
ACOG are architecting a multi-tier, multi-platform client/server
implementation. "It won't matter if you're at the slalom canoe/kayak venue
in Tennessee, the yachting course off Savannah's coast, or the Georgia
Dome in Atlanta -- medal winners will be posted identically at all the
events," says Mark Ryan, ACOG's project manager of Large Systems
Technology Development/ Integration.

At the 1994 Olympic Winter Games in Lillehammer, Norway, results of
sporting events were flashed electronically to the world media covering
the Games within 3/10 to 7/10 of a second. Taylor says the objective for
1996 is to beat that performance. The reasons for his confidence are tied
to numerous enhancements in IBM products and technology, including:

o More powerful and faster IBM personal computers

o 16 megabit (vs. 4 megabit) token ring Local Area Networks (LANS)

o Full exploitation of the 32-bit IBM OS/2 Warp (vs. the
  16-bit version used in Norway)

o Faster S/390 mainframe processors

o Significant and continuous performance improvements in
  the DB2 relational database family used across platforms --
  from the System/390 to the IBM personal computer.

In addition, more CICS (software for transaction processing) functionality
and database-to-database communication increases data integrity and
reliability.

Client/Server System Enhances Results Delivery

Taylor also points out that the Results System client/server architecture
-- from S/390 server to the IBM Personal Computers operating on LANs in
the various sports venues -- venue-centric design provides the
architecture to support better response time at workstations, better
access to data and more reliable data, helping ACOG achieve error-free
performance. The Results System will deliver sports results to the media
for faster communication to the billions of television viewers around the
world.

In Lillehammer, throughout the run and from the time a bobsled nosed
through a finish-line photo beam, data was zipped electronically through a
timing interface to a host mainframe in Oslo for critical calculations --
position of the bobsled, intermediate times, comparisons to the leader,
re-ranking of all competitors, etc. -- then sent back to the venue for
display on the Commentator Information System.

There are differences in the Results System that ACOG and IBM are
developing for Atlanta. "This CICS-to-CICS transaction methodology
approach (used in Lillehammer's Results System) has evolved to new and
updated transfer of data between databases," Ryan explains. Included is
DDCS2, IBM's Distributed Database Connection Services product that allows
users to access and update a variety of host DB2 databases -- for example,
transferring from the IBM personal computer OS/2 server to the S/390
platform.

Local Server Performs Calculations

"In many Atlanta Olympic Games venues for timed sports, the data will go
straight from the SWATCH timing device to the IBM personal computer server
in the venue," says Taylor. "The local server will perform the necessary
calculations and send results directly to the Commentator Information
System for broadcasters and scoreboards, eliminating the need to involve
the host mainframe except for backup.

"But, even when the round trip from a venue to the host data center and
back is necessary, the high-speed band widths provided by the
telecommunications network will help us be faster than 3/10ths of a
second."

Event results also will be distributed within seconds to other facilities
-- the Info'96 information/communications system, world news press
agencies, broadcast pagers and printers, to produce hard copy Results
information.

The Results application stores its information in a DB2 for OS/2 database;
this information is then passed to the IBM S/390 server for repository and
distribution. The S/390 also notifies the AS/400 server, which executes a
client/server transaction to update Info'96 information. The central
Info'96 server distributes the data to the AS/400s in other venues. From
the time the S/390 receives data from the Results server, no more than two
minutes elapse until this information is available to the local Info'96
client. This includes all networking and processing time on both
databases.

Ryan points out that separations among different Results functions are
being developed so users will share more than 250 LANs. His group also is
developing a software distribution system, which will allow for the
initial loading of more than 6,000 workstations onto the network and
provide the ability to accommodate software changes.

Master Database on IBM S/390

The master Results database resides on the S/390 server. It contains such
data as information about athletes and officials, competition schedules,
start lists, world and Olympic records and results from in progress and
completed competitions. Information from the central DB2 database is
downloaded as needed by each venue, where it is stored in a IBM personal
computer Results server DB2/2 database.

As the competition takes place, scoring, timing, distance and statistical
information is entered -- via SWATCH timing devices -- through several IBM
personal computer Results workstations located in venues then sent to the
IBM personal computer Results server. The server performs many of the
calculations, giving the venue a large degree of independence from the
S/390 mainframe.

Taylor says the Atlanta Games will have "productivity benefits as well as
run-time performance benefits of letting the operating system deal with
the system resources instead of our dealing with them."

Across the application portfolio, there will be an IBM S/390 server using
MVS/ESA, DB2 and CICS, communicating with IBM AS/400 Advanced servers, IBM
RISC System/6000 and IBM Personal Computers in a client/server
environment. "This mainframe server for the Olympic Games -- with its
smaller subservers and LAN clients -- looks like a system you might find
in many enterprises today," Taylor points out.

Ryan maintains that there are several reasons for choosing a S/390 platform
for the Olympic Games. "The S/390 provides extremely high availability and
extremely good performance. It also affords significant application
availability for people who need features such as data integrity -- with
one copy of a database that everybody can access in a timely manner. It
certainly is the industry large system server of choice for an
enterprise-wide implementation." He adds that the S/390 serves as a
central repository for all data; a second S/390 mainframe provides backup
of critical applications as part of the comprehensive architecture.

IBM has been a key player in the Olympic Movement since 1960 in Squaw
Valley. As the worldwide information technology sponsor, the company is
providing systems and people to help plan, manage and run the Olympic
Games through the year 2000.

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