transfer market computers, smartphones and tablets in the hands of Asian companies, the U.S. computer industry is largely based on services. Microsoft, Google, Apple or Yahoo! are the spearheads, while HP and Dell are losing momentum. But the scandal of widespread Internet monitoring by U.S. security services, called Prism, it appears that Barack Obama has dealt a heavy blow to its own economy.
“This is an advantage not to be an American”
“Today, our market is an asset not not American! Individuals are primarily responsive to the product, but professionals are more sensitive to who holds their data, and where, “explains Christian Fredrikson, CEO of the Finnish publisher F-Secure. “The leaking of information is so important that companies have made it their primary concern threat,” he adds, while the group is launching a pre-release Younited a cloud service hosted in countries considered more “safe”, including Finland.
Today, all players swear by the cloud, that is to say, the market for online storage. There are Google (Drive), Apple (iCloud), Dropbox, Microsoft (SkyDrive, Azure) or the leading professionals, Amazon. With U.S. laws that require players to provide intelligence services all the information they could ask in the name of counter-terrorism, non-US companies increasingly reluctant to entrust their data to the Redmond giant, Cupertino or Mountain View. The National Security Agency (NSA) uses and abuses his toy, and even if they sometimes take advantage of information pertaining to industrial espionage, companies in Silicon Valley can only see the marketing disaster.
competitors are rubbing their hands
From the other side of the U.S. border, the competitors are rubbing their hands and thank Barack Obama. They are more likely to provide data hosting services located outside the United States. Some even offer customers to choose exactly where their information is stored, via a list of their data centers in the world. While it is prudent to combine two geographically distant countries in order to duplicate the data and limit climate and political risk. But it is now easy to choose Ireland and Canada, instead of the traditional U.S. and UK, both involved in the scandal Prism.
ambiguous French position
In France, the OVH is the niche with its cloud named Hubic. “The growth has accelerated this service as soon as there has revelations” such as those on Prism, we confided his boss Octave Klaba in July. The selection by the customer of the country where the data is hosted “ can reassure compared to situations in different countries,” he added.
But recent revelations about similar practices Prism Directorate for External Security (DGSE), have also hurts the image of French companies. And surveys sometimes the borderline of legality carried out by the Central Directorate of Internal Intelligence (DCRI) are not there to reassure those who hesitate. “At least in the United States, security services admit their practices and conduct in apparent compliance with safety laws passed after the September 11 attacks,” confided to us under the guise of anonymity officer of a large European operator in early September. “In France, many things seem to go outside the legal framework, including with a leftist government, and it’s even scarier than Prism for an entrepreneur,” he adds.
the United States and France, legislators are now faced with a stark choice. They can decide to support more strictly monitoring the Internet, and restore its reputation with the proportionality principle, an ideal in the heart of the concept of justice. Politically, this decision is risky, because it is not going in the direction of zero risk to aspiring voters. Parliaments could therefore decide to let the executive do what he wants. But they are now warned, it will cost jobs and accelerate the decline of western digital economy. We do not play with impunity freedoms …
