Summer Olympics 2024: Why WAN Acceleration Wins The Race

The summer Olympic Games held in Paris – including the Paralympic Games - is not only a celebration of sports and athletics. It is also a major media and entertainment event. It will adorn our screens – including those of our mobile devices – between 26th July to 11th August 2024. Atos, one of the major French international IT companies supporting them, says they are “the biggest event ever organised in France [with nearly 15,000 elite athletes competing] in more than 50 sports.”

The International Olympic Committee’s Jérôme Parmentier, speaking on Olympic viewing habits in the era of TikTok and Netflix, comments in an interview with Warc: “In the last two Games, digital-only consumption was only 10-15%. I assume it will be higher this time - but how much higher is the question. We’ll know on 13 August. And I'm very optimistic also on advertisers – we see very positive signs in the US and in France as a host country.”

Atos also reveals that 13.5 million tickets have been sold, and that the Games will involve “more than 350,000 hours of TV to keep billions of fans transfixed,” Christophe Thivet, Chief Integration Officer of the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games, states in his blog, ‘Making IT happen for Paris 2024.’

It’s simply too big to fail for either the competitors, or for the technology teams behind the scenes. He adds: “Yet, while the Olympic Games are unique, the IT challenges they face mirror those faced by IT leaders in every sector. Namely, how to mobilise an agile, high-performing team and how to balance the drive to innovate with the need to tightly manage risk.”

Wider considerations

The risk is not just about the technologies used to support the event, or about the physical security of everyone attending and participating in the Games. There also has to be consideration to other aspects of the big event – namely the production and editing of TV coverage, and also of web and social media content. Paris is expected to be the most connected event in the history of the Games. Data volumes are expected to increase exponentially, and with this comes a need for cyber-security.

Andrea Nepori writes in his December 2023 article, ‘How IoT and Digital Transformation Are Shaping the Paris 2024 Olympic Games’, for Direct Industry eMag: “Given its nature as the “most connected” edition of the Games, Paris 2024 and the IOC/IPC also represent a prime target for cybercriminals. For this reason, Atos has placed an additional focus on securing the organisations’ operations and the Games to fend off as many cyber threats as possible.”

Then there are companies, such as Fluidion, using sensors to monitor the water quality of the River Seine. Nepori says Fluidion is not only providing tools and sensors, but it is also monitoring strategic points along the river. such as near the Bibliothèque Nationale, Pont de Iéna, Pont Marie and Pont Alexandre III, which are the anticipated venues for Olympic swimming events. They need to be safe.

Automating the Paris Olympics

Wellfound says the International Olympic Committee detailed its artificial intelligence (AI) agenda to revolutionise the Paris 2024 Olympics, “with AI capturing athlete movements to help judges score and using mobile videos and AI to identify potential future Olympians in remote places.” It is also being used to make the Games fairer, to detect fraud – such as from fake ticket selling websites, to preventing a cyber-attack. Biometrics are also playing a role to secure the Games.

Cloud computing will be part of the Games. The purpose of leveraging it is to enhance all aspects of the event, from logistical planning to real-time data analytics. Cadence Design Systems says dedicated data analytics teams will optimise game planning and operations for the first time in the Olympics.

Why WAN Acceleration wins

As IT plays a vital role in the Olympics, including media production companies editing and managing large media data files, there is a need to be able to backup and restore data fast, and to be able to collaborate with dispersed production teams around the world. Similarly, the IT supporting the Games needs to be set for service continuity as much as it should be for disaster recovery, and to prevent cyber-criminals taking advantage of the increased data traffic; or, to prevent them from disrupting the Games themselves.

David Trossell, CEO and CTO of Bridgeworks advises: “The traditional ways of backing up and restoring data include WAN optimisation and SD-WANs. They’re both great technologies, but they often don’t live up to expectations. For example, WAN optimisation can’t send and receive encrypted data, and the performance of SD-WANs is also increased with a WAN Acceleration overlay.”

WAN Acceleration uses artificial intelligence and machine learning, as well as data parallelisation to mitigate the effects of latency and packet loss, which can increase broadband utilisation by up to 98%. Unlike WAN Optimisation, it can securely send and receive encrypted data – plus disaster recovery sites needn’t be located with the same circles of disruption. Ideally, data should be stored at 3 disparate locations – miles away from each other.

By mitigating latency and packet loss, jitter is either reduced or eliminated. So, for those working in Media and Entertainment, who want to collaborate on projects, such as the production of TV programmes or social media content about a major event, such as the Olympics, it is advantageous. It can also help to maintain service continuity – even in the event of a technical problem with the IT systems being deployed in support of the Games themselves.

With WAN Acceleration being unique, it wins over other technologies. It is likely that SD-WANs will be deployed during the Games, as they are a dominant technology, but they would do better with a WAN Acceleration overlay. WAN Optimisation may go so far, but it often doesn’t live up to expectations. Even so, it’s clear that the Olympics isn’t just about sports and athletics and it’s increasingly becoming a showcase for new technologies, such as artificial intelligence and cloud computing. So, there is space for the IT companies involved and the organisers, to deploy WAN Acceleration to bolster the Olympics.