Big Green Takes Center Court at U.S. Open - Page 3

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Other chores still need doing

Aggregating and distributing stats and updates seconds after they happen on the courts. Click to enlarge.

The Web site's only one portion of IBM's participation in the Open: There's all the heavy lifting around collecting, sorting through, storing and distributing data from the matches happening above.

Raw scoring and performance data -- aggregated from judges' and scorers' handheld devices, and from statisticians working there in the media room -- is distributed within seconds to the USTA's domestic media partners for use in their own TV feeds and Web sites, as well as to USOpen.org. Global TV affiliates get data-laden graphics made by the staff, which are also pushed out and updated throughout a match. IBM WebSphere Business Integration Message Broker and DB2 are the solutions responsible for this end of the effort.

At the end of every match, each player also gets an interactive DVD, created using IBM's technology. The DVD provides a wealth of stats around the player's performance -- most notably, a shot-by-shot breakdown of their match -- enabling them to closely review their performance later using the reams of data IBM collected. (The DVD is processed and available immediately after a match, courtesy of a rack of IBM's System x Series servers.)

Roger Federer seconds after defeating Maximo Gonzalez. By this time, the match's final scores have been pushed out online and to media partners through IBM's delivery system. Click to enlarge.

Then, there's digitizing the draws, the schedule of matches, times and locations each day of the tournament -- a deceptively complex process that until last year had been done by hand using what Pierce O'Neil, the USTA's chief business officer, described as little more than a big board and magnetized name plates.

IBM's also involved in tracking and broadcasting the speed of those serves -- and with U.S. star Andy Roddick holding what's thought to be the record serving speed of 155 miles per hour and already pushing that limit during this year's Open, that's no mean technological feat.

Additionally, Big Blue is providing the technology underlying the site's Web widgets, containing real-time scores, schedules, news and stats, and which are embeddable on fans' MySpace, Friendster, iGoogle pages and elsewhere. And, oh yes, it also handles a little something called network security.

Billions spent and saved on "Green"

IBM's clearly got its hands full even beyond promoting Big Green. But with energy-conservation in the enterprise such a hot topic, it's no wonder IBM's environmental and server consolidation work is taking the limelight.

That's also not surprising for a company that's taken the green message to heart even within its own walls -- with a downright Rafael Nadal-like level of intensity.

Oh, right. During all this, tennis is being played. Here, Venus Williams squares off against Samantha Stosur in the first round. Click to enlarge.

Aside from purely allocating $1 billion annually to Big Green, IBM is transitioning its workforce so that close to half telecommute full-time; has cut expenditures on its own datacenters over the past ten years enough for $1.5 billion savings annually; and takes back 40,000 pieces of technology a week, 99 percent of which gets reused or recycled.

Of course, whether more U.S. companies will follow the lead of IBM and the USTA and buy seriously into the green revolution remains unclear. But with two very different companies betting heavily on it internally -- and reaping the benefits -- that's a message that's sounding more and more like a winner all the time.

Christopher Saunders is managing editor of InternetNews.com.