Rio 2016 staked its place in the history books as it became the Olympic Games with more digital coverage than any previous Olympic Games.

From Archery to Golf to Rugby to Wrestling, distributing the results of every single event at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games to the world in less than half a second, is a technological feat years in the making.

A truly digital Olympic Games

Driven by the maturity of mobile technology, Atos led the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) IT effort to enable Games results and other data to be shared both online and through traditional means faster, to any platform, anywhere. The IT backbone supported the running of the Olympic Games and saw competition results shared in real-time to worldwide broadcasters.

“Technology is critical to the success of each edition of the Olympic Games,” said Thomas Bach, President of the International Olympic Committee. “We are delighted that we will be able to continue relying on Atos and its vast experience to deliver flawless, innovative IT services.”

Cloud technology and cybersecurity in Rio

“I am extremely proud of the hard work and dedication the Atos teams put in to delivering successfully the technology for the Rio 2016 Games – a fantastic demonstration of Olympic excellence,” said, Thierry Breton, Atos Chairman and CEO. “For each Olympic Games, we bring innovations in technology from Cloud to Cybersecurity as well as solutions around the ever increasing volume of data, to further add to the enjoyment of fans around the world.” 

“Rio 2016 use of Cloud for the very first time at a Summer Olympic Games for key applications including managing over 300,000 accreditations for the complete Olympic family,” said, Elly Resende, Rio2016 Technology Director. “Atos has been with us every step of our IT journey to support us in creating a richer Olympic Games experience for all involved.”

 Rio 2016 IT in numbers

• 1 – first time cloud is used at a Summer Olympic Games to host the volunteer portal, the accreditation and workforce systems – reducing cost and improving efficiency.
• 2 – number of new sports added – Golf and Rugby Sevens. Golf alone generated more result data than all other sports together.
• 37 – number of competition venues where Atos installed and managed a complete IT infrastructure to ensure the events could take place as scheduled.
• 400 – number of IT security events per second (200 per second in London).
• 300,000 – the number of accreditations processed and activated using the Atos IT system (up 20% since London 2012).
• Over 100 million – number of messages sent to media customers to share the real time results and data from all 42 Olympic sports and 306 events (up from 58.8 million at London 2012).

Edited from press release by Cecilia Rehn.