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IBM confronted a daunting task with the Olympics even before its work began. "Staging the Olympic games was the equivalent of producing two Super Bowls a day, every day, for 17 days," one company spokesperson said. IBM partnered with the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games (ACOG) and used its own hardware, software and computer-networking technology to build an efficient, highly accessible three-tiered, integrated client/server system to support over 100 applications, 150,000 on-site users, and millions of customers worldwide over the Internet.
The physical logistics of the Olympics presented a challenge to IBM. With over 80 venue sites, some events took place within a 1.5-mile-radius Olympic "ring" extending from the center of Atlanta, but others took place at Stone Mountain Park, located 16 miles outside the city.
At last count, ACOG was using IBM technology on an impressive scale:four S/390s,...