Microsoft Corp might soon be one of the first US cloud-computing companies to let Europeans store their online data closer to home, a response to fears that US data centers are more vulnerable to snooping by the US government.
The company on Wednesday said it is to give German customers of its online services the option of storing their data in new data centers it plans to build in Germany. The new option would be available in the second half of next year.
European consumers, privacy advocates and lawmakers have cited reports based on leaks by former US National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden to claim that data stored by US companies is not safe from US government eavesdropping.
Such concerns pose a threat to firms such as Microsoft, Google Inc and Amazon.com Inc, whose business model is increasingly built around data storage and so-called cloud services such as Microsoft’s Office 365.
Microsoft chief executive officer Satya Nadella said the company would start next year using data centers in Magdeburg and Frankfurt that are managed by T-Systems, a subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom.
“These data centers would ensure that customers’ data remains in Germany and that a German company controls access to data in accordance with German law,” Nadella said in Berlin.
In practice this would mean that US authorities trying to access a German customer’s data would have to work through authorities in Germany, where privacy laws are strict.
“I would be hard-pressed to think that this would have been Microsoft’s first choice had they not had pressure from the Europeans and especially from the Germans,” said Robert Atkinson, founder and president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. “They had no choice but to make this deal, with a telecom [company] who frankly is a competitor of Microsoft.”
Carsten Casper, managing vice president at Gartner Europe, said that Microsoft is putting the bar higher with this model.
However, among the outstanding questions is whether such an arrangement would work in other European countries and how much it might cost.
“From a German standpoint, this is a good move — but the overall market is obviously bigger than just Germany,” Casper said.
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