Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) is one of the several US cloud service providers in Europe.
This new Europe-only data handling offer comes on the back of changes to the Safe Harbor Agreement late last year. The changes were introduced after it became public that the US Intelligence services accessed ‘private data’ of Europeans as well.
The understanding under the Safe Harbor Agreement was to allow movement of data between the US and European continents without prior consent from its citizens. But the Sheldon-expose led to amendments in data-handling laws. These were expected to negatively impact American Cloud service providers’. However, by tweaking the services they provide, US-based Cloud service vendors are all set to continue their business in Europe.
US cloud providers’ sense opportunity
The latest Safe Harbor Agreement changes are just the opportunity cloud players like Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) were waiting for. According to a European technologist, Richard Munro, the Safe Harbor ruling is an ‘opportunity’ for companies such as vCloud Air Service by VMware, the Palo Alto-based service. Offers to segregate data at UK or German data centers, has been winning players such as VMWare much of their latest orders, says Munro.
For larger players such as Amazon’s Web Services, the opportunity with Safe Harbor is the large number of conversion of local clients to its German data centers. Soon, the ecommerce giant will add new facility in the UK. It already operates data centers in Ireland, apart from Germany. Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) and other American cloud service providers will use the opportunity offered until newer ‘data transfer’ policies are affected between the two continents.
