Photos: Inside Wimbledon's tech fortress

Chris Lee is the Wimbledon project director for IBM, which provides the IT infrastructure for the championships. Wimbledon is just one part of a global sporting technology operation for IBM, which also provides the infrastructure for tennis's other three Grand Slams — the Australian, French and US Opens — plus the Superbowl and the US Masters golf championship.

IBM has provided the tech know-how behind Wimbledon since 1990, when the technology was, by today's standards, rather primitive.

As Lee says: "We have transformed Wimbledon. In 1990, there were no TV graphics and we introduced some statistics. The big thing was in 1995 with the internet. Then there was the radar gun in 1994. There is a uniqueness in respect of our client's business. It's about a combination of tradition with technology."

That balance between maintaining Wimbledon's "country tea-party" atmosphere and delivering one of the world's largest real-time information projects is a tough one, which only a large company could deliver.

IBM pulls in 180 staff during the championships, and starts preparations in September the previous year.