In what is being reported as the biggest order for the supplier from Brazil, Rio Olympics committee has hired Microsoft to deliver the websites pertaining to the mega-event that would be held in 2016. The websites will be hosted on Windows Azure as they have to remain stable even under high pressure.
Olympic 2015 website to be hosted on Azure
This deal is being considered as one of the biggest orders for Azure supplier in Brazil. While there are many companies that make use of Azure for their intranets, the Rio Olympics is going to be a grand event and people will be checking the website too often and from a variety of devices. That makes the task tough.
Microsoft and Rio Olympics committee is expecting around 12 billion web hits a day during the seventeen-day games period. The websites will be bulky because there will be multimedia, especially videos streaming on it. And for this reason, Microsoft developers have to make sure the website stands to the needs of committee members, sportsperson and the general audience. They have to make sure the website does not crash during any point of the games – be it pre-booking the tickets to Olympics, planning to site-seeing during the Olympics or checking out one of the games that has been played but missed by some audience who now wish to watch it online. There are many more things that are to be taken care of and primarily, the Microsoft’s Brazil team has divided the website for three main audience as said above: general audience, sportsperson, and committee members.
Out of the 12 billion hits a day, Microsoft expects 60 percent of the traffic from mobile devices, especially cellphones. That means the website should have a mobile version ready before the booking opens for the Olympics in 2016. As of now, there is a placeholder website offering pre-booking and pre-planning tips etc but that is just a dummy until the real website comes out.
Other than video streaming, the website has also to deal with real time stats for games being played and games that have been just finished. The maintenance of the website will also be in the hands of Microsoft developers who have already been chosen for the work.
