BBC mulls cloud support for London 2012 coverage

Broadcaster considers using cloud-based storage

Cloud computing could help the BBC cover the London Olympics

The London 2012 Olympics are a little under two years away, and the BBC is considering cloud computing as a way of meeting the enormous viewer demand that the games will create.

But in the current economic climate, simply throwing money at the problem is not an option, as BBC CTO John Linwood explained: "We're looking at what is the most cost-effective way of delivering what we need to do. Clearly we have to find ways of [covering the games] which don't involve going out and building huge amounts of infrastructure that won't be used beyond the Olympics. We're looking at everything from straight-forward caching to on-demand cloud."

However, the cloud can bring more benefits than just an elastic response to viewer demand, according to Linwood.

Using the cloud to facilitate digital storage of broadcast output and other information is something the BBC was considering before the question of Olympic coverage was raised.

"Virtualisation is the first step to get us into a position to use the cloud. We're looking at providing centralised storage, rather than having storage sprinkled around the BBC. We could have a centrally managed storage cloud that's used on demand by different parts of the organisation," Linwood said.

Using the cloud for storage brings additional security concerns to an organisation, as information is stored on servers outside a company's direct control. Linwood admitted: "There's clearly content we'd never put into the cloud, for example licence fee and viewer information, and source information from our journalists. We're working with potential cloud providers around their security models to make sure it's safe."