The cloud computing industry in the United States is under threat as several businesses have chosen to move data outside of the country as a result of the shocking revelations by Edward Snowden of National Security Agency's (NSA) snooping programs. Many companies fear the NSA might gain access to their data, which is the main reason for moving data from the U.S. into another country. This is a huge problem for the United State's cloud industry, and it could lead to the loss of billions of dollars if the exodus continues.
The information came from a survey performed by PEER 1 Hosting. The website claims that its findings were based on a 10 minute survey conducted on 300 small companies and 250 employees based in Canada and the UK.
When it comes down to Canadian companies, 33 percent claim they plan to move their data out from U.S. datacenters. However, these findings are not extensive since PEER 1 can only point to a single client in the form of iDigital, which has been dealing with data flight.
The problem for the U.S. cloud computing industry doesn't end there. According to The Star, Canada is planning to lure companies such as Google and Microsoft into storing sensitive data in Toronto to escape from the NSA snooping. This is a smart move by Canada, as it is a great time to profit from the United States' unwillingness to allow top tech companies to release information about the amount of data the NSA has asked for.
"There are governmental agencies right now in Canada who are actively trying to recruit Silicon Valley companies like Google and Facebook and trying to convince them to build cloud infrastructure in Canada," according to Robert Hart, founder and chief executive of the Canadian Cloud Council. "I would say there's a lot of movement right now at a political level to convince some of these larger software companies ... to host their software in Canada to get that data away from the NSA for optical reasons."
"I think right now Canadian and international organizations have a monumental opportunity to capture a lot of business from organizations that no longer want to deal with the States," Hart said.
According to one estimate, businesses that choose to store data outside of the U.S. could cost the country over $35 billion in revenues during a three year period. This is huge, and it could potentially cripple the cloud computing business in the U.S. for years to come. The possibility here is that it might not recover until the government chooses to abandon the NSA program.
