How long will it be before the cloud (and possibly all of your important business data) is moved to India or somewhere else overseas? This is an important question to ask. Unfortunately, several recent articles highlight the fact that, once you put your sensitive personal and business data into the cloud, you really have no control over the physical location where that data resides. It’s very easy for large technology companies to move their entire operations and all of your critical data from one location to another. If that company later decides to move all of your data overseas to save a few bucks, who will have control over the people hired to access and maintain that data?

There is a track record of technology firms outsourcing facilities overseas to save cost and in the process taking away jobs from US employees. There are also several articles that highlight the increased security risks associated with outsourcing to companies outside of the US. Companies should be very careful as they explore online options for data storage, moving beyond the price issue to ask critical questions about data security, reliability and ease of access.

The question about data security raised by our own government begs a question, will the Obama administration make true on the promise of stopping the outsourcing of American jobs overseas?. Will those efforts also apply to facilities, manufacturing facilities and data centers? If so, there really is nothing to worry about. So far however, nothing significant has been done, leaving the door wide open for the global exporting of our nations intellectual property to any country that offers the cheapest electricity and workers.

>> Did you like this article? Ping it!

This entry was posted By Andre Morris on Saturday, August 8th, 2009 at 10:40 am and is filed under Tech Club General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.