Sports Technology & Communications News from Around the World

The 2014 Winter Olympics have brought along a variety of exciting stories and inspirational moments, but what many don't stop to think about is the sheer amount of technology that not only goes into the Olympics, but also allows the Olympics to come to us, the regular people all around the world watching. Avaya is bringing a variety of new technologies to this installment of the Olympic Winter Games, and in many cases, has even managed to bring developments never before seen.

The Avaya (News - Alert) network had its work cut out for it in Sochi, with reports suggesting that the network would be called upon to support 120,000 mobile devices at any given time. That's leading some to call this session's games “the largest bring your own device (BYOD) Olympics” yet, made perhaps even more staggering by the revelation that accredited media users will have full—and free—access to high-speed connections throughout the games. That's putting plenty of strain on Avaya to keep the bandwidth flowing, and by all reports, it's holding up.

But that wasn't the only first; this Winter Games is said to be the first that will turn to network virtualization to help drive its events. Avaya once again stepped in to help with the Avaya Fabric Connect system, allowing the Sochi Olympic network to be built with surprising speed, and put into place well ahead of the Olympians' arrival. Additionally, should any issues emerge in the network—as is often the case, especially with a heavily-used network—making repairs to said network will be faster and easier thanks to Avaya's tools.

Even showing the Olympics gets a boost from Avaya's technology; Avaya Fabric Connect was once again there to help Sochi put Internet Protocol Television (IPTV (News - Alert)) to work, with 36 separate HD channels for each venue.

Taken together, each of these developments allowed the Sochi 2014 Organizing Committee to not only make setting up the massive undertaking that is the Olympics much simpler overall, but the simplification also allowed the organization to save money, as is commonly the case when operations get simpler.

The key takeaway from this is fairly easy to spot: if Avaya's hardware can bring not only process simplification and cost savings but also what amounts to new world's records in several industry firsts to the Winter Games, then it has plenty of potential to do likewise when put into action for a business as well. The same powerful networking technology and connectivity provider that gave the Olympics such a push can easily be put to work in a corporate setting. A business may never need to accommodate 120,000 mobile devices all at the same time, but wouldn't it be nice to have hardware and systems sufficient to handle that much? A business may only have 10 percent of that amount on the system, but that just improves the chances that nothing will go wrong with it.

Avaya's really shown off its prowess at this installment of the Winter Olympics, and should in turn be able to turn this gold medal performance into some major dividends down the line.