By: Don Fujiwara
Cloud Wars
Cloud. Used to be, you'd say the word and call to mind those fluffy, white goobers scudding lazily across a clear spring sky. No longer nature's Rorschach test in the sky, now "cloud" is a buzzword. Now, instead of cotton balls floating by, it's about greenbacks flowing down some carrier's new revenue stream. Now, it seems one unintended—and unforeseen—consequence of the Patriot Act could result in those greenbacks wafting over Europe's way.
In January, our Becky Bracken listened in on the Justice Department's conference call on Cloud Computing and Data Privacy, and what she came away with was "the U.S. takes privacy very seriously." So seriously, it would appear, that under the USA PATRIOT ACT—signed into law back in 2001—U.S. companies are required to hand over data to federal authorities if asked, even if said data resides on servers on foreign soil.
At the OTA Privacy & Data Protection Town Hall, held in Chicago, I spoke with Chris Babel, CEO of privacy solutions provider TRUSTe, who acknowledged that "some non-U.S. companies and governments—even consumers—are concerned about using U.S. cloud service providers, because they're worried that the U.S. government, under the Patriot Act, could access their information."
European concerns have got to be wondering if now's the time to get out of DoJ, when it comes to U.S. cloud. Fears over just how secure their information is on the American cloud may drive cloud business into the waiting arms of European cloud carriers. All set to reap the benefits are France Telecom-Orange and Deutsche Telekom's T-Systems division.
Toward the close of January, Orange had crowned itself the leader of French cloud computing, touting that it serves a customer base of over 3,600 in its Business Services cloud solutions.
DT's ICT subsidiary T-Systems has been blazing its own contrail through the cloud realm, most recently when it clinched a four-year, $53 million SAP contract with Spanish national postal service Correos in December. But the dynamo has been amassing a veritable stable of international cloud deals. Promotora de Informaciones, S.A. (PRISA), a media conglomerate and fellow Spanish concern, entrusts T-Systems with its global IT platform, and Swiss Jet Aviation recently extended their contract by several years.
Johannesburg-based Consol Glass has been an ICT customer for six years, and Brazilian insurance firm Intermedica has been on board since 2004.
While Martina Weidmann, T-Systems spokesperson, could not elaborate on any potential partnerships down the road, she did disclose that "the number of smaller, cloud-based deals worldwide is growing rapidly."
