The technology behind the BBC's Olympics coverage:

The Olympic Games on home soil will be the final instalment of the most operationally challenging period in the BBC’s history, and the broadcaster’s chief technology officer (CTO) John Linwood told Computer Weekly’s CW500 Club about the “terrifying” challenge of providing live coverage of all events at the Olympics, thinking the unthinkable and balancing this with his day job as a corporate IT chief.

The BBC has this year faced several major challenges, from broadcasting the Diamond Jubilee and the European football championships not to mention the Proms, and live music festival the Hackney Weekend, all while moving large chunks of its operation from London to Manchester, and into its newly expanded Broadcasting House location. “This year has been the biggest operational challenge we have had,” says Linwood.

For example, the corporation is running 24 live high-definition (HD) TV channels ensuring that every second of the London Olympics can be watched live or recorded from multiple devices.

While his day job of running IT at the BBC goes on with things like bring your own device schemes and upgrading Microsoft Exchange being planned, it is the fact that the London 2012 Olympics is set to be the most digital and technology enabled event in history, with all sports available for viewing from multiple devices, that keeps him awake at night.

“This is the biggest digitised event ever and has been terrifying me for years,” says Linwood. “The terrifying thing for us is the fact that everybody will be watching this during the day on lots of different devices.”