Cloud Mini-Series Part 3: The Costs of Forced Localisation

Grazed from ProjectDisco.org.  Author: Matthias Langenegger.

his post is part of a series on the opportunities and challenges of cloud computing in the developing world. Previous posts covered the following topics:

    Part 1: The transformative potential of the cloud and the different types of cloud services

    Part 2: The economics of the cloud and the protectionist threat

ICTs are generally among the most restricted of all industries when it comes to forced localisation. They suffer from virtually all types of localisation barriers, from local production requirements to local content requirements. With regards to the cloud, the two most relevant localisation barriers are IT infrastructure requirements and data storage requirements (e.g. forced localisation). The use of those two barriers increased significantly in the past few years…


Local IT infrastructure requirements are designed to force Internet companies to establish data centres and other infrastructure within the country as a condition to be granted access to the local market. A number of countries have adopted such laws or are considering them, including Brazil, China, Indonesia, Nigeria, Norway, Malaysia and Vietnam…

Read more from the source @ http://www.project-disco.org/competition/032814-cloud-mini-series-part-3-the-costs-of-forced-localisation/