Photo credit: Khedara/Flickr.

The CIO of the London 2012 Olympic Games revealed last week that cloud computing would not be used prior to or during the games because the risk of failure has been deemed too high.

Although the cloud is seen as the best way to deliver scalable online services cost-efficiently en masse, the Games’ CIO Gary Pennell has decided to refrain from hosting data and applications in the cloud.  There are, he explained, too many mission critical applications that he did not want to risk outsourcing.

His decision illustrates the fears that remain over handing important data and the responsibility for running vital applications to a cloud provider. From storing and delivering athletes’ results to providing a wealth of information for international media outlets, Pennell has instead chosen to run London 2012’s IT needs from a specially built infrastructure on servers in their own private warehouse.

Speaking at Gartner’s European Symposium in Barcelona, Pennell said: "On the face of it, there is a natural synergy between an event and the cloud. The economics make sense, cloud is the way to go in the medium to long-term. But it would be a very brave man who would use cloud computing to measure athletic performance."

"We need to take data from different sources, like from the venue. We also provide background on athletes, for journalists and pass information onto the news wires. We cannot be in a situation where we have to wait for people on standby for support."

Pennell also explained that the hosts of the Olympics usually reuse the codes and systems from the previous games. Therefore, to redesign a new system “does not make economic sense, but I expect to see a gradual evolution to cloud computing."