A particular story that gained popularity last week has really caught my attention and got me thinking.  If you didn’t know a US Judge has just ordered Microsoft to release emails from servers stored in a foreign Datacentre (based in Ireland). The decision isn’t immediate and gives MS time to appeal, but it’s not looking good for those who think that data stored overseas is safe from the US government. This comes at a time when not many have forgotten about the revelations from Edward Snowden that the NSA and GCHQ have been helping themselves to all manner of data stored both abroad and locally.
As SharePoint people  – who are being encouraged to adopt Azure and Office 365 – what does this mean for you? Will this change the viewpoint of the organization that you are working in? If this US ruling sticks, what’s the future for global US Tech companies in general? Is this decision so big that it will stifle the development of Cloud Services? Or, is it something that will eventually be circumvented by those who can afford to implement a complex network of international companies that can operate under different jurisdictions.
Thoughts?
That is exactly why European governments and a big part of European big business (which is in large part dependent from the European governments) will never commit themselves fully to the cloud, at least not in the foreseeable future. Any SP service provider operating in Europe should take it into account.
Tomasz mentioned France, but I believe Germany has a similar policy, even enforced by law.
The only acceptable middle way would be for me a hybrid solution. The sensitive data must remain locally and other can be put in an EU-located cloud. Would that make sense?
