Fans Find Best Seats for The Championships are at the 'Net; www.wimbledon.org sets new records for IBM-powered sports Web sites.ARMONK, NY--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 6, 1999-- Within the first days of volleys and sets, the official Wimbledon Web site (www.wimbledon.org) proved that the best seat at The Championships was at the 'Net. Designed, developed and powered by IBM (International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY, www.ibm.com) The world's largest computer company. IBM's product lines include the S/390 mainframes (zSeries), AS/400 midrange business systems (iSeries), RS/6000 workstations and servers (pSeries), Intel-based servers (xSeries) for The All England Lawn Tennis lawn tennis: see tennis. Club, the official site recorded nearly a billion hits during the tournament, becoming the most highly trafficked official Grand Slam grand slam n. 1. The winning of all the tricks during the play of one hand in bridge and other whist-derived card games. 2. Sports The winning of all the major or specified events, especially on a professional circuit. site in history. Total site traffic for the fortnight tallied 942 million hits, 71.2 million page views and 8.7 million visits. In just the first nine days of The Championships, www.wimbledon.org surpassed the 634 million hits mark, set by the official 1998 Nagano Olympic Games Olympic games, premier athletic meeting of ancient Greece, and, in modern times, series of international sports contests. The Olympics of Ancient Greece Although records cannot verify games earlier than 776 B.C. Web site, also powered by IBM. The Web site demonstrated its success early in the tournament when it registered 430,000 hits per minute during the Henman vs. Courier five set match on Wednesday, June 30, smashing the Grand Slam Web site record of 145,478 hits per minute, set at Wimbledon in 1998. The Web site was an international tennis showcase as fans around the world traveled to the virtual view of Wimbledon. Many European fans logged into the games, with over 13% percent of hits coming from the United Kingdom and over 29% percent from Europe. "Through the innovation and flexibility of e-business, IBM and the All England Club combined the best in tennis and technology to create a unique sports experience," said Tom Burke
Wimbledon enthusiasts particularly enjoyed the Java Scoreboard feature, which provided live results from every match and could be downloaded to users' desktops. This feature was a core component of the Wimbledon Channel, a fast-track link to audio, video, statistics, news and photographs from The Championships. SlamCam, a robotic camera fans could control from their PCs, was also a popular feature, capturing 1,242,644 snap shots of Wimbledon tennis action. FanCards, a new feature which allowed fans to send electronic postcards to their favorite players, were extremely popular. Tennis enthusiasts around the world sent 31,034 FanCards, and tennis great Steffi Graf received over 2,858 good luck wishes. On-site spectators could also send FanCards to their favorite players from IBM's new CyberCourt, six public kiosks that connected spectators to the virtual view of Wimbledon. Special CyberCourt kiosks were also available for players to stay in touch with family and friends during The Championships and to receive goodwill messages from fans. From the first day of play, the Web site experienced tremendous popularity and rapidly increasing traffic, showcasing the scaleability of IBM's technology solution. Through an innovative integration of products and services, IBM also collected match results and statistics, and distributed information to the media and display boards on the grounds at Wimbledon. Products and Services Involved in IBM's Wimbledon solution: Systems integration, Web design, and content hosting from IBM Global Services IBM Global Services is the world's largest business and technology services provider. It is the fastest growing part of IBM, with over 190,000 professionals serving customers in more than 160 countries. ; IBM PCs, ThinkPads, IntelliStations, Aptivas, RS/6000 workstations, RS/6000 SPs using AIX (Advanced Interactive eXecutive) IBM's Unix-based operating system which runs on its Intellistation workstations and pSeries, p5, iSeries and i5 server families. operating system, IBM 2216 routers to balance traffic among Web servers and provide Web caching, Netfinity servers, DB2 Universal Database for Linux, Lotus Notes, Lotus Domino, Net.Commerce, eNetwork Dispatcher Software that determines what pending tasks should be done next and assigns the available resources to accomplish it. It may execute other programs or generate a list for human operators to follow. See scheduler. , Tivoli software, IBM SurfAid Analytics, LAN Network Manager IBM Token Ring network management software. LAN Station Manager is the workstation counterpart that collects data for LAN Network Manager. and RAMAC (Random Access Method of Accounting and Control) The first hard disk computer, introduced by IBM in 1956. All 50 of its 24" platters held a total of five million characters! RAMAC was half computer, half tabulator. Array storage units. Coming Soon - Catch the last Grand Slam of 1999 at the official Web site of the 1999 US Open at www.usopen.org. Produced by IBM with the United States Tennis Association “USTA” redirects here. For other uses, see USTA (disambiguation). The United States Tennis Association (USTA) is the national governing body for the sport of tennis in the United States. , the site will be live in August. - IBM, ThinkPad, IntelliStation, Aptiva, RS/6000 SP, AIX, DB2, Netfinity, Net.Commerce, eNetwork Dispatcher and RAMAC are trademarks or registered trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation. - Lotus, Lotus Notes and Lotus Domino are registered trademarks of Lotus Development Corporation (company) Lotus Development Corporation - A software company who produced Lotus 1-2-3, the Symphony spreadsheet and Lotus Notes for the IBM PC. Disliked by the League for Programming Freedom on account of their lawsuits. Quarterly sales $224M, profits $10M (Aug 1994). . - Tivoli is a registered trademark of Tivoli Systems Inc. - Java is a registered trademark of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the US and other countries. - Other company, product, and service names may be trademarks or service marks of others. |
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