Researchers at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research in Geneva are being held back from adopting cloud computing on any significant scale due to the delay in establishing a European regulatory framework for data protection. Speaking at the Cloud Computing World Forum in London recently, Bob Jones, head of CERN openlab, said that the European Commission's failure to push through clear guidelines for data protection in the cloud was hindering uptake within the scientific community.

“We are working with high-tech companies, industrial companies and European agencies, and the key point is the regulatory framework is creating a barrier,” said Jones. The benefits of cloud computing are not lost on CERN. The organisation's existing European data centres currently manage up to 15 petabytes of data a year over 100,000 CPUs, but that only represents 20% of the total data generated by its Large Hadron Collider accelerator.

Source: Tech World