UK businesses look to store data outside of the US Cloud

"People in the UK have been reticent for a while about putting data into the US because of the Patriot Act, which means the government there can pretty much get access to everything," said Scott Fletcher - who is the founder and chairman of UK cloud infrastructure specialists ANS Group.

It is claimed that the National Security Agency have ‘direct access' to data stored by major US Cloud providers like Google and Microsoft through its ‘Prism' data collection system. Both Google and Microsoft have admitted that they allow ‘lawful' transmission of data through the NSA.

"Prism has put into peoples' minds that there might be co-operation in the UK with that," said Mr Fletcher - referring to rumours of a data swap between the NSA and GCHQ.

"People talk to us and want their own private cloud service, because they know we don't have that sort of relationship with the government."
"They want all the services to be based in the UK, rather than using Google or Amazon Web Services," he said.

An Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF) survey found that 10% of companies from outside the US had cancelled projects with US based cloud providers.

36% of US cloud providers said that the Prism story had made in ‘more difficult' for them to find business outside the US.

The author of the ITIF survey Daniel Castro concluded that it seemed acceptable to assume that US cloud providers would lose 10% or 20% of their overseas business to companies based outside the US.

By 2016 it is estimated that 50% of Cloud computing business will be operating from outside the US and that the total global Cloud market will be worth $207 billion.