Foreign Businesses Flee US Cloud Computing, Survey Finds

Grazed from InformationWeek. Author: Thomas Claburn.

Fully a quarter of businesses are moving data out of the US as a result of revelations about the scope of data gathering by the US National Security Agency, claims Canada-based cloud hosting provider PEER 1 Hosting. Some qualifications apply: The survey behind the company’s assertion doesn’t cover 25% of all businesses. It describes findings from a 10-minute survey of 300 small companies — 250 employees or less — based in the UK and Canada.

When the sample is confined to just Canadian companies, 33% say they plan to move data out of US datacenters. Evidence of that exodus isn’t extensive: PEER 1 was able to point to one client, iDigital, that has been dealing with data flight. Matt McKinney, managing director of iDigital, an 85-person cloud hosting provider based in British Columbia, Canada, said in a phone interview that privacy is particularly important to Canadians, noting that the country has been aggressive in dealing with online privacy through its regulatory agencies…

McKinney said customers began asking where iDigital’s servers were housed two or three years ago, when concern about the implications of the US Patriot Act became more widespread. The NSA revelations last year, he said, "were the straw that broke the camel’s back. Eight out of 10 questions from customers now deal with governance, compliance, and data storage."…

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