Buyer Case Study - Digital Transformation for the Olympic Games: IOC Changes IT Infrastructure Strategy to "Build Once, Use Many Times"

Gard Little

IDC OPINION

This IDC Buyer Case Study examines how a nonprofit nongovernmental organization (the International Olympic Committee [IOC]) is using cloud technology to deliver on the IT operational requirements of hosting the Olympic Games. In detail:

•  For the International Olympic Committee pursuing digital transformation involves turning its biannual physical events into a global and fully connected experience. This involves implementing cloud, analytics, mobility, and social technologies to improve both customer experience and behind the scenes' IT infrastructure. Since 2001, Atos has been delivering on these high-visibility IT infrastructure projects as digital services provider for the IOC, and it recently won a competitive fixed price bid to support the games through 2024, by which time the IOC has agreed to move IT infrastructure operations to an all-cloud delivery model.
•  IDC believes the move to centralize most IT infrastructure and cloud operations in a single location, instead of building a customized version for each locality where the games are held, is a powerful example for all CIOs contemplating an essential governance issue related to digital transformation; specifically, how to manage the balance between standardization and centralized control versus local flexibility. 


IN THIS BUYER CASE STUDY 


This IDC Buyer Case Study examines how a nonprofit nongovernmental organization (the International Olympic Committee) is using cloud technology to deliver on the IT operational requirements of hosting the Olympic Games. It discusses the IOC's implementation of related technologies (i.e., analytics, mobility, social) and describes one IT governance issue, which arises from its plan to move to an all- cloud IT infrastructure operation by the 2018 Olympic Games. 


SITUATION OVERVIEW 


Organization Overview 


The IOC describes itself on its Web site as, "the supreme authority of the Olympic Movement." It has a complex task to orchestrate all of the organizations that work to put on the games every two years. In its own words, "Acting as a catalyst for collaboration between all parties of the Olympic family, from the National Olympic Committees (NOCs), the International Sports Federations (IFs), the athletes, the Organising Committees for the Olympic Games (OCOGs), to the TOP partners, broadcast partners, and United Nations agencies, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) shepherds success through a wide range of programmes and projects."

The CIO of the IOC, Jean-Benoît Gauthier, not only has all of the standard responsibilities of running IT for the Lausanne, Switzerland-based organization, but also has a key role in providing IT governance and standards to all of the organizations listed previously; a technology master plan guides all of their associated efforts. Also the CIO is leader of a technology coordination committee, so as IT projects get started, efforts can be orchestrated among all the parties involved and monitored against the technology master plan.

Challenges and Solution

The IOC's challenge is enormous. It must orchestrate the efforts of 200,000 employees, addressing 4 billion customers and operating 24 x 7 in a new territory every two years. Constituents include more than 15,000 athletes, 30,000 media, and over 30 technology partners. As projects go, the Olympic Games are about as high visibility as they get. From a technology perspective, this means during the games, the underlying IT infrastructure can never be the reason for a delay, and further, the IOC can never lose critical information about the results of sporting events. To that end, Atos helps the IOC analyze how much system redundancy it needs depending on the demand for critical or real-time information — in some cases, up to four IT systems are running in parallel for redundancy, since asking athletes to rerun events like the 100-meter dash final is not acceptable. Since the Salt Lake City Games, individual solutions for cloud, analytics, mobility, or social technologies have been implemented at various times by Atos to support the overall digital transformation of the Olympics.

The scale up/scale down attributes of cloud solutions are well suited for the seasonality of the Olympic Games, two weeks of hyperactivity followed by two years of a relatively slower tempo; but that benefit of flexibility would accrue to other organizations with more evenly spaced, or frequent, seasonal cycles too. For the London Games, Atos piloted some cloud activities, related to Web integration, but the Sochi Games were the first full implementation of a public cloud to operate the official Web site. At the moment, Atos is already testing the use of Canopy, its private cloud, for 2018 PyeongChang Winter Games hosting the game's IT systems; the IT infrastructure is already in place, and the first set of applications are being tested during the summer of 2015. Atos plans to have the private cloud solution implemented by 2018 for the PyeongChang Games in South Korea. As part of winning its contract extension, Atos proposed the idea of using Canopy to "build once, use many times" as part of the IT infrastructure. Beyond the benefits of flexibility, reducing IT costs was a driver for the IOC in deciding to change its approach, and IDC research consistently shows cost reduction as a top driver for migration of workloads to the cloud. Overall, Atos estimates that the IT costs for each Olympic games is €500 million, and the move to centralize IT infrastructure will result in 10–15% savings.

"Build once, use many times" addresses an essential IT governance question, how to manage the balance between standardization and centralized control versus local flexibility? Table 1 indicates the approach used. Spain was selected as the location for the centralized assets (Atos had developed experience in that location since its initial engagement with the IOC in support of the 1992 Olympic Games). By examining the two columns in Table 1, two decision rules can be detected. The first decision rule is when a fast response is needed, perhaps triggered by an incident, then the host city location is optimal. The second decision rule is when you need to understand the local perceptions of customers or partners, and how they react to an incident, (e.g., the Atos interface with the physical infrastructure and telco providers) then the host city location is required. In one case, the infrastructure and cloud operations team is split, because of Atos' need to understand the context in which thephysical infrastructure providers in the host city and the local telecom/Internet service providers operate. In another case, the building of systems integration and testing capabilities (e.g., for the results reporting system), the approach has changed from building systems in a central location and then physically moving them to the host city to using virtual servers where systems can be integrated and tested centrally and then deployed digitally to the competition venues of a host city. The benefit has been an increase in the time available to test systems and the increased flexibility of when to move the virtual servers between the central location and the host cities at a lower cost than shipping physical equipment. The availability of testing environments has increased by 10%; likewise, running the Integration Testing Lab in a centralized location has an estimated cost reduction of 10–15%.

TABLE 1

Distribution of IT Infrastructure Activities and Operations for the Olympic Games

Source: Atos, 2015

IT security is central to a successful event, and analytics has played a key role since the Vancouver Games in 2010. Interestingly, the security outcome most desired is nothing — no disruptions, no negative impacts to brand or image, and no notice by most people that anything unexpected happened. Atos indicated the London Games had 200 IT security incidents per second, which had zero impact. Real-time monitoring to identify vulnerabilities or to look for patterns and determine if the games should be stopped is a high-stakes, high-visibility activity, which could not be done as effectively without the analysis of big data (i.e., both structured and unstructured data sources). Thankfully in London, only 20 IT incidents were judged at the most serious level of threat but none compromised the London Games.

About 80 different IT systems/applications are used to support the Olympics, mostly commercial-off- the-shelf items, but the accreditation system is custom and central to providing physical security, in part because of the need to interface with local law enforcement. The Olympic credentials, issued by Atos on behalf of the IOC, are considered a secure form of identification in/around the host city, and for individuals who require a visa to cross the border into the host country, the credentials replace therequirement for a visa. Data analytics are used to filter, analyze, and trend tendencies around the vulnerability points identified across the accreditation infrastructure to protect how personal data is managed, processed, and accessed by specific authorized staff. One design goal for the accreditation system is to provide the best balance of people, process, and technology, not necessarily the latest available for each individually; for example, Atos is still using some principles developed for the Barcelona Games in combination with current state of the art technologies.

The media partners and spectators have been the largest external driver of expectations related to demands for IT mobility; The Media System, an intranet for reporting event results, developed by Atos, delivered some mobile applications for reporting event results at the Vancouver Games, but it was the London Games for which all event results were fully available via mobile devices. The demand for content on events and results is expected to grow, and Atos is working to deliver video integrated with real-time data for the 2016 Rio Games. Mobile devices have transformed the user experience for both live and television/Internet audiences. Atos estimated there were 8 billion connected devices used to watch real-time events and monitor results during the Sochi Games, which were the most streamed Olympics ever, and as the number of mobile form factors grows, the demand for "over-the-top content" viewing will rise steadily for Rio, PyeongChang, Tokyo, and beyond. Atos partners with the local Internet service providers, and physical facility operators for WiFi, to ensure all understand the applications and information architectures required to provide data to consumers' mobile devices; similar to security, the mobility benefit achieved is the absence of incidents or service interruptions as content is delivered.

Many mobile device owners are also using social technologies surrounding Olympic events to interact with their network of friends about the games, but social collaboration also extends behind the scenes to the ecosystem of organizations the IOC orchestrates to deliver the games. One challenge is each organization has its own set of business processes and tools related to collaboration, but internal business processes may have to be modified as the IOC orchestrates collaborative activities among partners, and the question arises at what point partners will move from their collaboration tools to a common collaboration platform. For example, Atos has to integrate a team of 4,000 technology staff coming from the organizing committee and 15 technology partners and technology volunteers, but Atos does not have a contract with each (i.e., each partner has its own contract with the IOC or the organizing committee). Typically, Atos uses the six-year period before each games to plan how this collaboration will work. Interestingly, after the London Games, Atos has become "zero email certified," meaning it uses no email for internal communications, opting instead to use blueKiwi (an enterprise social software company acquired in 2012) for workflow collaboration that replaces internal work by email. The plan is to use blueKiwi from PyeongChang Games onward; the collaboration platform will be used by not only Atos but also all technology partners, the IOC, and the organizing committee.

Results

The paradigm shift for IT infrastructure to "build once, use many times" has created a centralized cloud delivery model and clear decision rules about what activities need to remain in the host cities. Cloud services are delivering scale up/scale down flexibility, at a 10–15% lower cost; analytics are used as part of security monitoring; mobile applications are delivering event results in real time; and social technologies are used to improve the workflow related to collaboration while reducing the overall volume of emails.

FUTURE OUTLOOK

Cloud is foundational to digital transformation, thus implemented first, followed by initiatives involving analytics, mobility, and social technologies (typically alone but sometimes in combinations), and this pattern is likely to remain the case for most organizations in the future. Whether organizations choose to implement alone or in combination, IDC believes these four technologies will continue to overlap, so enterprise architecture is key to ensuring all the parts fit into a larger whole, so that organizations can manage their place in the digital transformation value chain. The IOC will continue to move more workloads to the cloud for each successive games because reducing IT costs will remain a driving force. For the 2016 Rio Games, this means the cloud-enabled IT infrastructure as described previously, but successive games will see a fuller implementation of SaaS/PaaS/IaaS.

Regarding analytics, the IOC is interested in how to reuse data from older games as well as how to analyze more data in between games. Marta Sanfeliu, Atos general manager for the Olympics, asserted, "Data is what can help the IOC promote its values," and explained that the IOC's vision for 2020 had two key elements involving analytics. First, the IOC has begun work on the Olympic Channel, an Internet TV channel, which will drive much higher demand for past data and extend the interest in analyzing that data. Second, the IOC wants to expand its promotion of sports to the youth of the world, and one possibility to engage with them is allowing young athletes to enter data about their own performance and benchmark it against others, or past Olympic results. In its Olympic Agenda 2020 document, the IOC wrote, "We must give our athletes and sports the worldwide media exposure they deserve also between Olympic Games. We must give our many actions in the humanitarian, cultural, and social field the attention they deserve. We must give the youth better access to athletes, sport, Olympic History, Olympic Culture, and Olympic Values." By looking at the growth of data and analysis related to professional sports over the past few years, IDC predicts that there will be significant demand for more analysis of Olympic data.

Regarding mobility, Sanfeliu predicted, "We will continue seeing the current trend on mobility," acknowledging there will be, "more services going through mobile devices." While the IT impact on Atos may be smaller (e.g., expanded development of mobile applications), IDC believes the demands for more information flowing to/from more devices will keep the telecommunications and Internet and operators busy figuring out how to cost effectively flex up/down bandwidth at the required levels for each successive games.

Enterprise social collaboration has been the least mature area, given the challenges described previously, thus social has the farthest to go in terms of adoption relative to cloud, analytics, or mobility. At the individual organization level, investing in unified communications and collaboration technologies is effective when there is cooperation on adjusting business processes and agreement to share information among the various parts and locations of an organization. But the IOC needs to orchestrate collaboration among all of its organizing committees. "Atos is trying to see how it would work to federate the various collaboration platforms," explained Sanfeliu. But IDC predicts, beyond the technical integration challenges, the people and process changes that may be required across all of the IOC's organizing committees will be a significant organizational change management effort.

For Atos, successfully delivering on such high-visibility projects will likely lead to other large systems integration projects with complex security requirements. IDC believes that once prospects benchmark their requirements against what Atos has delivered for the Olympics, they will be more likely to consider Atos as a systems integrator and digital services player. Of course, business process or industry knowledge remains a critical element. When asked why the IOC granted the contract extension to Atos, Sanfeliu responded, "Our experience on integration and the Olympic business was key, but we also understand the potential of cloud driving the digital transformation of the Games."

ESSENTIAL GUIDANCE

• Develop or refresh your organization's enterprise architecture to ensure coherence between efforts related to cloud, analytics, mobility, or social technologies. Whether projects address these four elements individually or in various combinations, pick future projects that support the overall goal of digital transformation and will test the strength of your enterprise architecture.
• Develop your organization's decision rules related to digital transformation as a part of overall IT governance. Specifically, consider on an activity-by-activity basis how much centralization/standardization is optimal for your organization. Some degree of local variation in activities is likely, but the economic advantages of cloud require a higher degree of centralization to pay off.
• Consider how to extract more value from the data your organization already has, or will have in the future. This is not only about trying to gain more insight or the ability to use analytics to predict the next best action or outcome but also it is about trying to monetize the data that may be a by-product of your ongoing operations. The information architecture component of your enterprise architecture will provide guidance, but knowledge of your industry will more likely yield the insights about what data may be valuable to others without compromising your competitive advantage. Understand this "monetization" exercise is not trivial, because becoming a data services provider would likely be a new line of business; carefully consider which partners you would need to provide data services.

LEARN MORE

Related Research

• IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Digital Transformation Consulting and Systems Integration Services 2015 Vendor Assessment (IDC #255870, May 2015)
• Reimagining a Cloud-Centric IT Services Industry (IDC #DR2015_T1_GL, March 2015)
• Enterprise Architecture: Strategic Architecture for the 3rd Platform (IDC #251163, September

  2014) 

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