Over Ireland? Bothered by Brexit? Find that new home for your cloud As we all know, the cloud isn't an amorphous, non-geographical blob of computing. Which is a good thing, because there are plenty of legal implications around where your data lives and where it moves both to and from. The point is, of course, that as the cloud isn't just a cloud, your choice of provider is largely dependent on …
However if you decide to host the data outside the EU then that means more paperwork.
Except if it's Switzerland, but that is typically a lot more expensive.
Sorry to flog a dead horse, but the first person you ought to talk to after the board gives its go-ahead is IMHO the corporate lawyer. EU law is indeed not very harmonised and by hosting it abroad you may fall into one of those lovely gotchas that exist between the cracks such as the national approach to mass surveillance (like all the fun that was had with the SRA law in the Scandinavian parts which was only changed after a lot of protests). In addition, don't think that hosting abroad suddenly makes you exempt from local laws such as, for instance, RIPA in the UK.
So, first work out a number of options where you'd want to host your data (looking at fun stuff like resilience and uptime + your assessment of how reliable the Internet connection is, or add a fixed circuit as a backup), then get the lawyer involved to profile the risks after which you can make a choice based on risk vs budget.
Rather than waiting until 24th June, I'd wait until a final decision on the Investigatory Powers Bill is made, if I was a non-European company looking for a place to host. It looks very much incompatible with EU data protection laws, puts logging and data hoarding burdens on service providers and hosting companies that are not yet clearly defined, and may well render the EU membership question moot in comparison.
A non-European company's best bets for hosting are Ireland (if English-speaking country and low corporation tax rates preferred), Netherlands (AMS-IX) or Germany (DE-CIX) if best possible connectivity within Europe is needed. As an added benefit they get a location inside the EU.
All these options are a lot cheaper for hosting than anything near LINX as well.
If Britain decides to leave the EU *and* introduce the IPB, it will no longer be attractive for anybody to host things here, including domestic companies.
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The article is saying keep your data in the EU unless you either don't need to or have a good reason not to (gambling or money laundering) but don't decide on the UK until it decides on the EU. After that I lost the thread of the argument, why not go with an existing cloud supplier hosting in Ireland?
why not go with an existing cloud supplier hosting in Ireland?
From a corporate perspective not a bad choice, for the same reason why it actually *is* a bad choice from a customer perspective: Irish enforcement of Data Protection is somewhere between non-existent and weak at best. They certainly do not play a leading role in protecting customer rights because there is a strong dependency on the revenue tech companies generate - any attempt to actually make them comply is fraught with political dangers for the regulator.
Other commenters here have made salient points about the legal issues. It's interesting to note that these vary greatly between EU countries, with some of these automatically ruled out by a previous employer on legal grounds. Potential taxes are something connected to the legal issues.
When it comes to costs, it's power that's the killer. Other costs have dropped to "not worth worrying about" levels, which is why the "host in London, Amsterdam or Frankfurt" imperative has disappeared since network circuit costs have crashed.
One thing that can't be predicted is who will be the owner of these various entities in two, three years time. A high-growth area of technology is going to arguably change ownership occasionally in the early years. Even if you say Azure and Amazon are going to always be in the market, will they keep services running that are less popular? They may migrate them to other service offerings, or they may sell off less profitable ones to other entities. Change of ownership meaning change of policies, change of points of presence, which may impact eligibility to continue using that service. If migration to another services is deemed necessary, there are some services that charge the earth for egress of data.
I am not surprised that Cyprus is a candidate for data centres etc. It has a largely educated, English speaking workforce after all. It is however just about the definition of "Its who you know, not what you know." Just make sure that your particular tech provider has good political connections, or is allied or related to someone who has.
Nepotism and crony-ism rule.
What do you mean 'over Ireland'?
Have at suddenly done something odd?
Other than the headline the article is mostly about Brexit which hasn't anything to do with Ireland other than it might create a customs border between the Republic and the UK but Ireland is committed to remaining in the EU.
Actually, it not that far off the reality.
Just look at how many of Irelands internet connetion does NOT pass UK territory going towards the rest of Europe. Unless there some that are not visible on public.maps, you might find yourself having trouble gettin hold of your data in Ireland if EU protection laws doesnt let you exit EU borders, even if it your data just transit in flight (thru UK) to Ireland.
Ireland datacenters would quickly loose customers that cares about these laws and datacenters in ie Germany/Sweden/Frenace would take over these loads on top of the ones in Amsterdam.
So it there is a Brexit, If I were a politician in Ireland I would start looking for a company that could put down a underseas cable or two directly to France and Netherlands to avoid the scenarios customer/job drain due to a Brexit.
And that is just for the Datacenter industry.
Currently there is a case going through New York Courts on whether Microsoft, as a US Company, should have to provide data hosted on their Irish servers to US authorities.
Until US extra-territoriality is resolved everyone needs to be cautious using Amazon and Microsoft.
No, I haven't missed anything.
That case would be equally applicable had the US government gone after the data in the UK, France, Germany, Spain, Sweden, Finland, etc etc.
What exactly has that got to do with Ireland? Ireland's pretty annoyed with the fact that the US is not pursuing that through normal diplomatic, police cooperation and legal channels.
The court case is about the US trying to exert universal jurisdiction over US multinationals regardless of where they are. It has literally nothing whatsoever to do with the location of the data, it's about Uncle Sam trying to prove a legal point in US courts.
Also the UK isn't exactly much less prone to snooping on data than the US is and has committed itself to some highly intrusive legislation allowing all sorts of access to data and interference with data centre operations. I don't really see a hell of a lot of difference between the two countries' stances. Also with the advent of major terrorism threats, France has jointed that club with rather draconian snooping powers.
I fully understand the need to deal with terrorism and so on, but some of the powers being sought in many countries are really getting into just universal data trawls.
"(for example Switzerland's a neat European location that's not part of the EU but enjoys excellent trade agreements)"
Switzerland like Norway pay for their agreements with the EU and probably more per capita than the Brits, no free lunch there. And they play by the rules too, so I am not that impressed by the "political independence" mentioned in the article. A fact the Brexit side seem to a hide.
Google has one data centre in Finland and Facebook one in Sweden. The cost of energy is, as somebody pointed out, of importance too.
I have not problems understanding the importance and advantage a English speaking country provides. But on the other hand English is the IT language and has become the "second" language in Europe without doubt.
To cheer you up, is it only me when I feel more at ease listening to say Obama's pronunciation of the English language than to Mr Russel Brand in this interview with Piers Morgan.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbH_Qw2dRO4
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