The Olympic Elephant in the room

With the start of the Olympics fast approaching, many financial institutions in Canary Wharf are expected to be testing their disaster recovery plans and, in particular, the options available should the Olympic Park affect the area’s power supply. All major trading institutions will have plans in place for eventualities such as fire, flood or loss of power supply and the “play book” will usually dictate relocating to a dark site or shared trading facility elsewhere. This will often include passing some of the workload to another part of the institution on another continent. But the reality is that Canary Wharf already consumes most of the power available to the Isle of Dogs and the transport infrastructure has little spare capacity. Now overlay a scenario where one million extra people move in next door and the biggest sporting show on earth is competing for “your” electricity. If there was a power failure, or even a brown-out, the play book says “relocate your staff and keep trading”. Unfortunately, there won’t be enough Boris Bikes to go around. Some institutions could be affected more than others; in particular, those involved in high frequency trading have expressed concerns regarding the Olympics and the – admittedly outside – chance the games may push the local grid to breaking point. The millions of transactions being processed per second are highly dependent on optimised technology, ultra high-speed communications and a stable and reliable power supply.