Picture Credit: Economist.comI have been covering the European cloud computing market a little bit here at Cloud Ave. One of the reasons for the failure of public cloud providers in that market is the strict privacy laws that requires the cloud providers to keep the data within the borders. Even though AWS has support for EU region, there are no widespread adoption of AWS because different countries within the European Union have different regulations with respect to their data security and privacy.

Especially in Europe, there are strict privacy laws which will ensure the presence of local cloud players or global players with infrastructure within the boundaries of Europe. Even within Europe, different countries have different requirements in terms of compliance and other regulations.

Almost all of the big cloud providers are facing difficulty in the European market due to the diverse regulatory requirements by different countries. Such requirements adversely affect various players and they are now swinging into action to streamline the requirements.

According to The Wall Street Journal, many US tech giants including Google, Microsoft and others are lobbying with various governments to streamline the privacy rules in Europe so that they have more flexibility with storing data remotely.
Some European governments are wary of private companies, particularly U.S. ones, controlling so much information about their citizens and are resisting plans to harmonize the rules. Germany has been at the forefront in this respect, insisting on its right to impose tough national standards.

 We have already discussed the requirements put forward by Germany and how it is opening up opportunities for regional cloud players. Even though the proliferation of smaller level players is good for a competitive marketplace, prohibiting bigger players like Amazon, Google and others due to strict data storage regulations will hurt badly. The move to lobby the 27-nation bloc in Europe for single set of rules for cloud computing is a very good move. 

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Krishnan Subramanian

Krish dons several avatars including entrepreneur in exile, analyst cum researcher, technology evangelist, blogger, ex-physicist, social/political commentator, etc.. My main focus is research and analysis on various high impact topics in the fields of Open Source, Cloud Computing and the interface between them. I also evangelize Open Source and Cloud Computing in various media outlets, blogs and other public forums. I offer strategic advise to both Cloud Computing and Open Source providers and, also, help other companies take advantage of Open Source and Cloud Computing. In my opinion, Open Source commoditized software and Cloud Computing commoditized computing resources. A combination of these two developments offers a strong competitive advantage to companies of all sizes and shapes. Due to various factors, including fear, the adoption of both Open Source and Cloud Computing are relatively slow in the business sector. So, I take it upon myself to clear any confusion in this regard and educate, enrich and advise users/customers to take advantage of the benefits offered by these technologies. I am also a managing partner in two consulting companies based in India. I blog about Open Source topics at http://open.krishworld.com and Cloud Computing related topics at http://www.cloudave.com.

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