March 27, 2008
Amazon’s computing cloud becomes less cloudy
There’s an interesting new twist today to Amazon.com’s ambitious “computer-in-the-cloud” plan. From now on, companies which rely on the etailer to run aspects of their computing for them can choose where those tasks get handled.
This raises interesting legal implications. For instance, Amazon now says customers can select whether they want their computing to take place in a datacenter in the US or in Europe. So anyone concerned about the snooping eyes of Uncle Sam (think Patriot Act) might prefer to go off-shore.
And then there’s the tax angle. Will some companies try to avoid local sales tax by taking ecommerce offshore?
The most obvious purpose, of course, is to give users a greater sense of control - something so far lacking in the world of cloud computing. You can now select where you want back-up applications to reside. That might give some customers greater confidence they will be able to avoid the fall-out from failures like the one that hit a number of Web sites powered by Amazon last month. Making the cloud a bit less cloudy seems a smart move.
