Europe’s fight over data privacy has a silver lining – a cloud-computing boom

Grazed from QZ. Author: Koon Ian Wong.

When it rains, it pours. The cloud is growing over Europe, to the tune of billions of dollars in investment from the world’s biggest tech companies. Microsoft revealed it has spent $3 billion on data centers for its Azure cloud-computing platform in Europe to date. Its next stop is France, where it will join rival Amazon Web Services in building cloud facilities next year.

Apple is reportedly preparing to plough close to $1 billion into a new data facility in Denmark, which is also where Facebook is said to be planning its own major data processing center. The reason for this flurry in activity can be gleaned from Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella’s tour of Europe, where he took the opportunity to announce something else, too: a book published by the Redmond giant titled “A Cloud For Global Good,” which includes dozens of detailed policy recommendations, with a sharp focus on privacy…

Read more from the source @ http://qz.com/799750/microsoft-msft-azure-europes-in-the-middle-of-a-cloud-boom-thanks-to-data-privacy-rules/