
Office 365 Delve
If that's not a snoop-sounding name...
Microsoft's CEO has announced it will build a UK data centre for its Azure cloud - just days after a similar announcement from AWS CTO Werner Vogels. It seems the race is on. Azure will have cloud services based in the UK "beginning in 2016" said Nadella's slide, whereas Vogels stated that the AWS installation will be online " …
"there may be circumstances when the US government can demand access to data, a point which is currently being argued in the courts."
Not easily if you use Microsoft's Bring Your Own Keys data encryption - which uses Thales secure HSMs - configured to block access from outside the EU....
This is surely the logical response to the end of Safe Harbor in current form - while the legal people on every side are thrashing out the details for any new agreement, customers are sidling uneasily away from anything that relies on US-based cloud infrastructure. Currently if you're using Azure you have no choice - your data is free for the taking in the US.
We shall defend our on-premise data centres, whatever the capital cost may be, we shall install Linux Mint on the beaches, we shall deploy Android phones on the landing grounds, we shall run Apache in the fields and in the streets, we shall hide Linus in the hills; we shall never surrender to MSFT.
Nadella proudly showed what he called the "iPhone Pro": an iPhone loaded with Microsoft applications, including Skype, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, several Office 365 applications, Dynamics CRM, and of course mobile apps for OneDrive cloud storage and Outlook email.
An iPhone with all of that shite, in addition to Apple's own stuff? Now that is a work of great evil. Does Nadella have horns?