IBM was the Official Information Technology and Internet Provider for the Australian Open 2004. The company designed, built, hosted and managed the official website for the tournament – AustralianOpen.com – in partnership with Tennis Australia.

Information on the Australian Open 2004 gathered by IBM SurfAid Analytics shows:

• There were 11 million visits to the official website – 11% higher than for the 2003 event.
• 1.8 million unique users visited the site.
• The largest number of unique visits to the site on a single day was 399,207 on  January 29th (Day 11). This day included both women’s singles semi-finals and the 3 hour, 42 minute men’s singles semi-final match between Andre Agassi and Marat Safin.
• The largest number of people visiting the site simultaneously was during the men’s single semi-final between Andre Agassi and Marat Safin.
• The IBM Real-Time Scoreboard, which provided live scores and statistics from every match in play, was downloaded 1.2 million times.
• The most popular women’s singles player profiles on the site were (in order): Kim Clijsters; Justine Henin-Hardenne; Fabiola Zuluaga; Maria Sharapova; Anastasia Myskina; Patty Schnyder; Venus Williams; Daniela Hantuchova; Lisa Raymond and Amelie Mauresmo.
• The most popular men’s singles player profiles on the site were (in order): Marat Safin; Roger Federer; Andre Agassi; Andy Roddick; Juan Carlos Ferrero; Lleyton Hewitt; David Nalbandian; Hicham Arazi; Mark Philippoussis and Paradorn Srichaphan.
• The largest number of visits to the site were from (in order): United States; Australia; United Kingdom; Belgium; Canada; Switzerland; Netherlands; Germany; France and Japan.
• The largest number of visits to the Web site from within the Asia Pacific region were from (in order): Japan; Singapore; Hong Kong; and China.
• NetPoll offered visitors to the official web site the chance to have their say on a different tournament related question each day and immediately see the results, using Linux Virtual Services from IBM e-business Hosting.

Scoring and statistics
IBM also provided the scoring system for the Australian Open 2004. Statisticians and speed serve operators tracked detailed statistics which were fed live to the on-court scoreboards, Australian Open intranet, graphics for broadcasters and the website.

But as many tennis fans know, the scoreboard alone doesn’t always tell the complete story of a match. The official web site also provided fans with a richer experience of the tournament and allowed users to see the key statistics behind the scores.

This information included first serve percentage, aces, double faults, unforced errors, winning percentage on first serve and second serve, winners, break point conversion, net approaches, total points won, fastest serve, average first and second serve speeds.

Speed serve and ace leaders

• Andy Roddick and Joachim Johansson (both 225 km/h) were the men’s speed serve leaders for the tournament, followed by Taylor Dent (219 km/h), Australian Chris Guccione (217 km/h) and Fernando Gonzalez (214 km/h).
• Australian Samantha Stosur and Venus Williams (both 193km/h) topped the women’s speed serve leader board for the tournament, followed by Alicia Molik (also Australian) (183 km/h), Justine Henin-Hardenne and Evie Dominikovic (both 182 km/h).
• Marat Safin topped the men's ace leader board with 126 during the tournament, followed by Andy Roddick and Roger Federer (both 68), Australian Wayne Arthurs (62) and Juan Carlos Ferrero (58).
• Patty Schnyder topped the women's ace leader board with 28 during the tournament, followed by Justine Henin-Hardenne (26), Lisa Raymond and Amelie Mauresmo (both 22) and Australian Alicia Molik (20).

Source: Event Statistics page www.AustralianOpen.com.

The scoring system for the Australian Open 2004 used IBM eServer BladeCenter technology for the first time. Blades provide greater computing power in a modular design, taking up less office real estate and easier to install than traditional servers.

Did you know? Australia Open and research
The same IBM computing systems used to serve more than 11 million visits to the official website of the Australian Open 2004 used spare capacity for two additional tasks, including an IBM project conducting protein folding experiments.

One of the keys to developing better treatments for – and possibly curing – many health problems is an understanding of the secret of protein folding. Scientists at IBM are building an incredibly fast computer, nicknamed Blue Gene, to help them do it.

In the meantime, the opportunity to use the same computers running Australian Open to run protein folding experiments – when not being fully utilised for the website – gives scientists a valuable additional resource to move their research forward.

The new technology that allows two or more workloads to be run on the same infrastructure in real-time – IBM Infrastructure Management – also offers great potential in terms of cost, flexibility and resiliency for many businesses.

April 2004