Testing times

Every live theatre production has weeks of rehearsals and practice runs, with a full dress rehearsal ahead of the opening night – and so does Wimbledon.

With the world’s press and millions of fans watching and commenting on every point played, IBM can’t afford to put a step wrong.

Testing usually starts each spring, followed by weeks of training for the people who will be gathering match data and statistics during the tournament, and then everything ramps up into full production for the Wimbledon fortnight.

But this year, the Icelandic volcano blew the spring testing schedule to pieces. One of the major suppliers was unable to fly over from Florida to do the testing in April. Not only could they not do the testing, they weren't able to bring with them several servers which are used for testing and then left here for the summer tournament. But this April, the volcano erupted and the UK’s airports were closed because of the ash clouds, and the schedule went out of the window. Fingers were crossed for several days - with updates every six hours - but then it became obvious that the team weren't going to make it, so large amounts of testing had to be done remotely.

The systems are critical to IBM and Wimbledon as they cover data entry, the recording of all scores and statistics, and the scoring system that accepts the data and sends it out to the official website and to the world’s broadcasters, including the BBC.

There are hundreds of machines here at the tournament – mostly laptops, but there are still about 100 desktops that are used for various things, such as the Internet kiosks around the grounds, and all of these have to be placed in the right location and configured properly. The kit gets refreshed every year, so it’s quite a task to get it right.

Despite the obstacles along the way, the system was put through its paces in the run up to qualifying week, and then a full dress rehearsal went ahead as usual.

And guess what..? All the IBM kit was in the right place, at the right time, and all working just as it should.