Firstly， the structure of the lightning location system and the state of the art are described. The characteristics of lightning monitoring data and its computing amount are analyzed. Secondly， based on the massive lightning monitoring data monitored by the grid lightning location system of China over the years， cloud computing technology capable of implementing reliable access and high performance computation of massive lightning data is proposed， realizing the stability， expansibility and application mode diversification of the lightning application system. Through a comparative analysis on cloud computing technology selection， the lightning information system architecture based on cloud computing is put forward as the preliminary design.