IBM Technology behind US Open

With more than 250 men and women vying for the U.S. Open championship, it’s a wonder that each and every ace (and fault) is seamlessly shown on the scoreboard, your iPhone, and online.

How do they do this?  This is all thanks to IBM technology and people that has provided the systems for the US Open for the past 18 years.

CNN has, a behind the scenes, article on how this is all accompliced.  And it is interesting that most of the data comes from one person only.  The match umpire that press a couple of buttons on a hand-held device.  Yes, he does get a bit of help from some statisticians that sits at court side that count the things that the umpire is not interested in.

As one of the fortunate ones that work for IBM, we get to see and play with the technology that is at the guts of a system like this.  On CNET was another article today about how IBM uses it’s internal people as its own software lab to test new and exciting things.  I am part of the Early Adopter group (TAP) within IBM and get access to some of these tools and software.  Sometimes it can be a real bumpy road with using buggy and unstable software but hey, somebody needs to do it.  The area that I mainly work in is around Linux and Ubuntu in particular and the adoption of it in the wider corporation.   

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