The flame now extinguished, the final race run, the games are all played out. There’s a wistful, melancholy feel to London right now; part deflated, yet still standing proud, like a flag flying half-mast - one mourning the end of the games, games that surprised us all. Because we all worried and fretted and moaned – about security, about chaos on the tube, about home working and how the internet might come to a standstill. Perhaps we worried more than we had to, maybe worry prepared us well. For Fluidata, the games did impact in ways not all positive, for instance a number of fibre installs in London were delayed or cancelled altogether due to the Olympic Network Route Embargo. However on the most part we were able to continue to deliver without disruption, and in facilitating our clients to work remotely, through additional service provision, and or consultation, the games in many ways brought us further opportunity. As for our network, we never expected it to buckle under the weight of heavy internet usage, yet we’re still relieved we remained unscathed, because as illustrated below, Olympic athletes weren’t the only ones to get a work out during the games. This graph demonstrates the increase we witnessed during the first week of the games. The biggest increase coming on the Wednesday; when we saw traffic shoot up by 100% on normal levels during Bradley Wiggins’ time trial victory. The trend continued into week two… Tuesday was the most popular day, peaking during the lunchtime triathlon when the Brownlee brothers captured Gold and Bronze and staying at a high level as Laura Trott, Sir Chris Hoy and Victoria Pendleton took medals at the Velodrome. The graphs illustrate the popularity of the games over the IP connections we provide. They tell us that London 2012 sometimes took priority over the latest workload we all had sitting on our desks. No doubt we will find out soon whether the Olympics proved to hinder or stimulate office productivity, let’s hope in the spirit of a positive Olympics that the enthusiasm, self-confidence and joy that the games brought to us served to make it the latter.
