230 engineers from 19 countries assembled in Athens ready to service over 6,000 Xerox machines

Dubai, August 16, 2004: At the Athens 2004 Olympic games, Xerox has assembled a force of over 230 engineers from 19 countries to handle the printing and publishing needs of the Games. To meet the Athens 2004 Olympic committee's guidelines, that results need to be recorded, tabulated and reported in hard copy to press, broadcasters, judges, Olympic officials, athletes, Sponsors and Olympic staff, within five minutes of the completion of each event, Xerox has created significant infrastructure on site across the 35 competition venues and 26 non-competition venues and guarantee they will have a technician on site within only ten minutes should a fault be reported, wherever it occurs across all 61venues.

To help fulfil this pledge, the Technical Operations Centre (TOC), will be manned around the clock during the event.  The TOC allows Xerox technicians to monitor all networked devices, enabling Xerox to anticipate any issues that may arise and check or replace equipment before any problems actually occur.  Xerox is able to monitor all 6,000 pieces of equipment through its CentreWare Network Services, which monitor and manage print and fax jobs.  CentreWare will act as the central command centre providing information about all devices available on the network servers and jobs printed to those devices, including troubleshooting paper jams, deleting or holding print and fax jobs, and delivering the network device status of any piece of Xerox equipment installed in an Olympic location.

"The service levels in place, amount of equipment provided, and ability of Xerox engineers to handle all the document needs for the Athens 2004 Olympic Games is a recognition of how critical the behind-the-scenes processes are to making the event run smoothly," says Vince Schaeffer, director, Worldwide Olympic Operations for Xerox.  "The bottom line at events like this is that customers want to know that their systems will work when needed, and that there are systems in place to ensure near 100 per cent availability.  This is what we aim to achieve for the full 17 days of the Olympic Games."          

Throughout Xerox's 40-year relationship with the Olympics, the complexity of the document processing requirements has evolved dramatically. When Xerox Corporation sponsors the Olympic Games for the last time this year, it will conclude a 40-year relationship the two organisations have had.  In 1964, during the Winter Olympic Games in Innsbruck, Austria, plain-paper copiers were used to print seven copies per minute. During the Summer Olympic Games in Greece in 2004, more than 6,000 printers, copiers and multi-function machines will support over 120 million pages of printing, between 10,000 and 18,000 different reports throughout the 17 days. The Athens 2004 Olympic Games will be broadcast to billions of homes around the world which, combined with the 'live' nature of the event itself, leaves no margin for error. 

"Xerox is the leader in document outsourcing, which brings to the project an unequalled understanding of document and print management", says Gerhard Heiberg, IOC Marketing Commission Chairman.  "We are delighted that Xerox's expertise and experience allows unprecedented service levels that will help to ensure a successful Athens 2004 Olympic Games".

For more information, visit www.xerox.com.

Xerox, The Document Company and the digital X are trademarks of Xerox Corporation. All non-Xerox brands and product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.

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For further information contact:
Agency Contact:
Prem Ramchandran
ASDA'A Public Relations Dubai,
UAE
Tel: 00-9714-3344550
Fax: 00-9714-3344556
Email: info@asdaa.com    
       
Xerox Contact:
Ayman Mattar 
Xerox Emirates
Dubai,
UAE
Tel: 00-9714-3525885                                                
 Fax:00-9714-3511621    
Email: ayman.mattar@xerox.co.ae         

© Press Release 2004