Mention Beantown and people think of clam chowder, Harvard University, and the Boston Marathon -- which celebrated its 108th running just a couple of weeks ago in April. Despite being steeped in tradition, organizers of the marathon are quick to take advantage of today's technology to track participants.
"Of course, the heat this year was tough for the runners, but from a technology standpoint, the race went very well," said John Burgholzer, technology coordinator for the Boston Marathon. While we can't control the weather (yet) " and that day was in the 80s " other aspects of the race are totally controllable. "The Web site responded all day long," said Burgholzer, "and most requests were responded to within a couple of seconds."
At its peak, the Marathon Web site handled 60,000 connections simultaneously. In the six hours of the race, the site received eight million page views in slightly less than six hours, for a total of 600,000 users during the race. Each year, the number of hits to the site expands by 10 percent to 15 percent, according to Burgholzer.
More than 75 Hewlett-Packard employees volunteered to provide technical support to race organizers. In addition, 125 HP workers, from 12 states and five countries, ran the marathon. This year, the company also provided hardware for tracking the race itself, for the media facilities, information kiosks, medical tents, pickup areas and finishing lines.
"We've been involved in hardware and support of the Boston Marathon for 10 years," said Bill Carlisle, director of Microsoft Solutions Group of the Enterprise Storage and Servers Division, who works out of HP's Boston office. "Every year the race gets bigger and the amount of work that has to be done escalates."
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