Trust lawyers, not techies, when it comes to the cloud CIOs thinking of shifting to the cloud or kicking off a flagship big data project would be better off talking to their lawyers than their techies before starting to leaf through glossy corporate presentations. Mark Webber, partner and head of technology at law firm Osborne Clarke, speaking at the Cloud Computing World Forum …
I'd be more concerned about where the servers are and what the Governments of the countries that host the data are likely to do. No matter what legal protection you have, if a judge or court in the USA takes umbridge over what is perceived to be on the server located in their jurisdiction you can kiss goodbye to your data.
"CIOs thinking of shifting to the cloud or kicking off a flagship big data project would be better off talking to their lawyers than their techies before starting to leaf through glossy corporate presentations."
Actually I think they're even better off talking to both. One can shed light on how much time and effort would need to be put into such a project (think costs) and the other can tell you all about all the possible attached legal issues and possible liability options.
Nothing new here IMO. Same can apply when a company decides to do business with a certain hosting provider for their website services.
Call me stupid, but surely if your data is anywhere other than on your own hard drive someone else has it? Be it a hosting provider or 'in the cloud' (there's not a lot of difference). Explain how a startup is supposed to fund it's own data center, even with a 5 million first round (choose your appropriate currency).
As for private individuals storing their data on the cloud, that's barmy, but the article isn't about that.
Interesting that the word trust only appears in the headline of this story. There must be a degree of trust between a cloud customer and the cloud supplier and it is often possible because the customer's legal advisers have been involved in the process. I know lawyer bashing has become a bit of a hobby these days but the fact is that as relationships become ever more complicated, and there are few more complicated than in the modern corporate world, you need people who will be able to keep score. That's where the lawyers come in. Dumbing things down and hoping everything will work out for the best just because you're afraid to think about the issues isn't the answer to them. Get the lawyers involved. IT doesn't like it when business units use shadow IT to get around them because the IT departments are the experts and should have a say in how things are done. Similarly lawyers and risk experts expect their expertise to be sought when needed. It could be that getting lawyers involved in the process will allay some of the fears about entering the cloud in the first place http://ow.ly/byoWG
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