Posted by: Michael Disabato
Cloud computing has hit its stride on the hype cycle. To those of us in networks, it's old wine in new skins. By way of reference, CompuServe and AOL were clouds in their day. Anyway, that's not why I'm here.
I had several conversations with clients and prospects when I was up in Canada. One of them had acquired a U.S. company and ended up with two data centers in each country. In effect, they had their own internal cloud. The CIO wanted to use the four data centers to allow load sharing in the cloud. It would have worked except for one minor detail: the Canadian data protection laws prohibit storing of personal information outside Canada if that data's security and privacy could not be assured. Given the terms of the USA Patriot Act, that privacy would vanish at the whim of the U.S. Government. Scratch that plan.
Increasingly, security and privacy regulations will limit the utility of cloud computing, since there is no "there" on the Internet. The complexity of the legal environment will negate any potential cost savings. Once again, the technology is way in front of the laws we have in place. This time, though, perhaps the laws need to stay.
Michael
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