The 2008 Summer Olympics are just around the corner. With over 10,000 participants in over 300 sporting events there are bound to be a number of new records set. With such a global sporting event also comes media coverage. This Olympic is the first in history to boast a complete 100% digital coverage. That’s a massive feat considering the amount of terabytes of video, audio and photographs that will be sent all over the globe. This brings up the question of how this feat would be accomplished.

Being in the file transfer business, I can clearly see some challenges to overcome when transferring such large amounts of data. But the biggest challenge I see is for photojournalists as they take high quality sports photographs. You see, we’ve been spoiled by live media coverage and expect sports photographs to make their way back to news websites almost instantaneously. This means the job of a photojournalist gets even more demanding than ever before. Not only do these photographers need to snap photos at the perfect moment, but also, not lose a moment sending them back to the publishers.

One sports photographer I met on a plane boasted how his photos get picked up by Reuters most of the time. But he then admitted it wasn’t because he’s an exceptionally good photographer – but rather he’s able to upload the photos sooner than others. So speed in this game counts and it counts a lot.

With limited internet connectivity, this can be quite a challenge. To make matters worse network latency – such as the average 150 ms on pan-pacific connection, can cut down file transfer speeds by half. Also network congestion can induce packet loss which can further slow down the file transfer process. (See file transfer times over different connections here.)

The file acceleration technology that we’ve developed at FileCatalyst® can clearly help in this case. We’ve built acceleration technology into our file transfer protocol that is immune to latency and resistant to packet loss. With other advanced features, we can ensure that files are transferred as fast as possible – sometimes resulting in 100x faster speed gains over traditional FTP.

While all this helps at the background layer – what about the front-end, the user interface? To make things even simpler for the photojournalist, FileCatalyst offers highly intuitive and automated products. We provide a java applet that uses FileCatalyst acceleration technology. What’s unique about this java applet is that it can run on any web-browser. So using a third-party computer, the photographer can easily upload high quality photos back to the publisher.

If the photojournalist has a laptop with an always-on connection available right from the sporting venue, he can use the hot-folder FileCatalyst desktop client. It’s a desktop client that can actively monitor a drive and detect new files. The new files can be automatically uploaded back to the publisher. Such automation takes away the mundane tasks of selecting files individually. It lets the photographer concentrate on what he’s best at – taking photographs.

These are just scenarios in how our file transfer technology can be deployed to optimize the file transfer process. If our file transfer technology interests you, I recommend you have a closer look at our suite of FileCatalyst products.

And as far the Summer Olympics go… I can’t wait for the opening ceremony. I expect a lot of action, passion and some new Olympic records to be set. So let the games begin!