We’ve heard it before, and we’re hearing it again. Europeans really, really, really don’t like the Patriot Act. The specter of an American cloud company turning data on European citizens over to the feds is slowing cloud adoption on the continent, said Christian Echeyne, director of IT infrastructure technologies and engineering for Orange Business Services.
“We see that fear in France and in all Europe — probably less in the Anglo-Saxon world and more in eastern and southern Europe — France, Italy and Spain,” he said, speaking at Structure Europe 2012.
Another gating factor on cloud: Europeans distrust outsourcing more than North Americans. “There is a delegation process — there’s less outsourcing in Europe than in the US and not just in IT by the way. Cloud is another form of outsourcing — it’s delegating something you were doing yourself to someone who can do it better,” he said.
European companies are very interested in cloud but they’ll watch how the early adopters fare before trying it themselves.
Another fun fact: Orange will leverage OpenStack, the open-source cloud, Echeyne said.
Check out the rest of our Structure Europe 2012 coverage here. A video recording of the session follows below.
