14 DAY TRIAL // The computer hardware manufacturer and vendor company Lenovo announced that it just completed the last shipment of more than 3.500 pieces of computing equipment to the Integration Test Center of the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad (BOCOG for short). Lenovo completes in this way its assignment to deliver all the hardware needed for the Olympic Games that will take place next year, including servers, desktops, monitors and notebook computers.
In this final delivery, Lenovo sent no less than "242 servers, 140 server racks, 2,375 desktop computers and 141 notebook computers for a total of more than 8,200 pieces of computing equipment", according to a company press release. These computers and related hardware parts will be used to power "39 competition venues and 17 data centers and BOCOG centers" rising the number of Lenovo branded equipment to almost 14.000 pieces.
The hardware infrastructure will be tested during 42 separate events including the World Cup qualifying matches and the Beijing International Marathon. "After years of preparation and planning, the testing phase is vital because implementation of the Games' computer infrastructure will take place literally overnight," said Alice Li, Lenovo's vice president of Olympic marketing. "We have worked with BOCOG to put together Lenovo systems that meet the specific requirements of this complex system, and we are ready to see them in action."
Lenovo designated the ThinkPad T60 notebook PC and ThinkCentre M55e as the two main computers that will be the backbone of the entire Olympic Games. Both of these systems are well known worldwide, the ThinkCentre M55e desktop being an international favorite because of its processing power and reliability. The ThinkPad T60 is the flag-ship of Lenovo's laptop and notebook line and it delivers the performance of a high end desktop PC packed in the mobility and style of a thin laptop. In order to connect all the disparate computing elements that will server the Games, Lenovo chose the SureServer R520, T350 and R630 server models that will handle all the informational traffic. It is expected that the Lenovo servers will have to face hundreds of thousands of requests per second for information related to the Games from the "athlete biographical information to the latest scores to organizing BOCOG activities".