SchlumbergerSema Gets Olympic-Sized Contract

SchlumbergerSema, a New York-based systems integrator, is spearheading the $300 million project, leading a consortium of 15 technology vendors including AT&T, Gateway, Panasonic, Qwest, Sun Microsystems and Xerox.

"We're truly putting together a one-team approach," said Jason Durrant, director of systems integration and testing at SchlumbergerSema.

SchlumbergerSema, which replaced IBM as the Olympics' primary integrator, will provide services for the Olympics through 2008, Durrant said.

The integrator is responsible for the IT system that tracks the athletes' times and scores in realtime and distributes them to the world's media organizations. In addition, SchlumbergerSema has developed games management software to manage transportation, staffing, medical and other administrative systems, Durrant said.

The infrastructure implemented by SchlumbergerSema includes 4,500 Gateway PCs, 225 Gateway Windows NT servers, 145 Sun Unix servers and 1,210 Xerox printers, all connected by 32,000 miles of optical fiber cable and monitored out of a centralized facility in downtown Salt Lake City dubbed the Information Technology Center (ITC).

SchlumbergerSema has 300 employees working on the project, half on-site and half in Barcelona, Spain, developing software. As the Games begin, Durrant expects to have an international team of 3,000 IT staff in place, including 1,600 volunteers.

While SchlumbergerSema performed most of the integration services itself, it turned to other solution providers for expertise in areas such as network management and help desk, said Durrant.

For example, IT PartsHouse, a solution provider based in Dallas, is providing consulting services for the HP OpenView network management platform.

"We had a number of products to chose from, but we chose OpenView because it has probably the highest reliability of any management tool on the market," said Gregory Maisel, director of business strategy at IT PartsHouse. "If they have one failure it will cost SchlumbergerSema millions of dollars in downtime and negative publicity."

IT PartsHouse recommended a distributed managed architecture, which places management stations at each of 12 different venues, said Maisel.

"It enables the local technicians to diagnose problems," he said. In addition, IT staff in the ITC have the same view into the infrastructure, he said.

IT PartsHouse is in discussions to provide similar services to SchlumbergerSema for the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, Maisel said.

Even before the Winter Olympics begin, work is already under way for the Athens games, said Durrant.

"Our goal is to basically carry the processes and procedures knowledge from Olympics to Olympics," Durrant said.

And how does everything look in Salt Lake City?

"We're in good shape," Durrant said.