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A cloud + a fringe = a silver lining?

The Edinburgh Festival Fringe is over for another year. Hundreds of performers have given thousands of shows to a huge number of culture seekers. Meanwhile, the IT industry has notched up another very public failure. The new box office system failed to cope with the demand for tickets on the first day and had to be patched hurriedly. It struggled along after that but was unable to implement the special offer that had been planned for last few days of the festival.

It must be a challenge to cope with the huge interest on the first day of ticket sales and then to manage the varying load fot the next three months. For the other nine months of the year, of course, the system isn't needed at all.

Does this sound like a candidate for cloud computing? I don't know how the existing system is implemented, but if it doesn't already use cloud to react to large swings in demand, perhaps the service providers should consider this option.

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