As the Commonwealth Games takes place once every four years, to say there is considerable pressure on Microsoft to get its IT infrastructure right is an understatement.

While the Games opening ceremony bathed Melbourne in pyrotechnic and piscatorial glory, a team of Microsoft engineers were inhaling sharply as the inevitable crush of Web site visits put 18 months of planning to the test.

Games organizers are anticipating more than 15 million visitors to the site (www.melbourne2006.com.au), generating up to 22 million page views during each of the 12 days of the event. That's the kind of load that makes most corporate information managers cower with fear - and the kind of challenge that has made IT planning for one-off sports events a niche capability restricted to the largest IT companies.

The site features a pantheon of Microsoft server technologies, ranging from Windows 2003 Server and SQL Server 2000 for content management to the newer SQL Server 2005 database for rapid search and analysis of the cumulative Games data. Content Management Server 2002 (CMS) handles online content delivery, BizTalk Server 2004 handles the movement of data between the systems, and Visual Studio 2003 provided the collaborative development environment for the site.

With BizTalk at the center of the Microsoft ecosystem, data coming from official Omega scoring systems is automatically checked for accuracy and validity. "These rules are essential for ensuring data integrity," says James Simpson, services program manager with Microsoft Australia. "If the system received data for a swimming event while the pool was closed, for example, the system would spot the anomaly and prevent the data from corrupting the official results."