As the reverberations about the United States surveillance program (PRISM) continue, businesses and governments are quickly taking action to protect the data belonging to their users. Whether these actions eventually lead to laws, I cannot say. I can say, and have been saying for some time now that data should stay within the country or region where the owner of that data also resides. Put more simply, sprawling and obscure public clouds should be used only for that data which the owner is willing to allow to be seen by others.
Even now, countries in Europe and elsewhere in the world are developing guidelines that set forth how data entering cloud computing environments must be handled within those countries. And who could blame them? If data in the cloud is leaking outside the country then those countries arguably have a legitimate need to protect that data.
So what does this mean for cloud and managed service providers? First, I think it means very little for those providers who are already UCS certified and audited. Since those companies can already verify how they interact with (and store) customer data. Second, for providers this means that there is going to be a lot of work in coming years as businesses grapple with the best ways to store, manage, and protect their data.
These "country clouds" will likely spring up all over as each country decides how best to protect its citizens data. This policy will also create many new opportunities for MSPs all over the world as the large international providers may have difficulty servicing within the guidelines of these country cloud guidelines.
In a way, the PRISM debate may have actually done quite a lot to bolster the need for private cloud MSPs. And closer attention being paid to data privacy and security is not a bad thing.
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