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?
Thanks Tomasz – which country was your previous company based in? I am really interested what the view is by country.
In my previous company (big European corporation), which has also own research labs, there was official statement that any external cloud solution/projects are forbidden. And in my opinion that’s the point.
If you are small company or you don’t have a data which value is critical for you business cloud, like Office 365, is really great idea. But if you have data which are valuable to you, you should think twice before moving to the cloud. Please also remember that US has something called patriot act, which also in some cases has impact on your data…
