New Privacy Laws Could Boost EU Cloud Industry 119
sweetpea86 writes "Cloud providers based in the European market could turn the fear, uncertainty and doubt around data protection and the U.S. Patriot Act to their advantage, according to Andy Burton, chairman of the Cloud Industry Forum. The only way that European companies can absolutely guarantee that their data doesn't end up in the hands of U.S. authorities is by choosing a provider that not only has a data centre within their jurisdiction, but is also owned by an organisation based in that jurisdiction."
Our MS vs Google fight (Score:5, Interesting)
My employer (a university) decided to outsource the e-mail-facilities for students. Microsoft and Google both made compelling offers, however Google could not promise that our data would never leave Europe. Microsoft did make that promise and was awarded the contract because of it.
A few months later MS had to confess that they couldn't keep that promiss. As the migration was not going smooth at all we are now back talking with Google.
The only private cloud... (Score:4, Interesting)
The only truly private cloud is the one you own, manage and host yourself. For most users this is of course not feasible; they lack the knowledge, time and inclination to set one up. For us tech types however it's getting to the feasible stage.
We have all seen the news about the Raspberry Pi [slashdot.org], a dirt cheap mini computer that can run on a handful of AA batterys. Take a linux distro of your choice which runs on the Raspberry Pi, add some lovely open source software like Zarafa [zarafa.com], sprinkle lightly with a dynamic DNS [wikipedia.org] and bake for however long you want in a cool Raspberry Pi. Serves an entire household (or more).
For that extra security flavour you can garnish with an OpenVPN connection [openvpn.net], and deny all other incomming traffic.
Et voila! Mobile, web accessable email, contacts and calendar (plus whatever else you want to set up on there) with the data being on your machine and in your control.