European cloud computing firms see silver lining in PRISM scandal

France has its “Sovereign Cloud” project while across the Rhine data firms have created the label “Cloud Services: Made in Germany”, all trying to reassure big companies that their information is stored away from the prying eyes of US spies.

European firms believe revelations that the US National Security Agency (NSA) has secretly gathered user data from nine big US Internet companies, including Microsoft and Google, will hand them a competitive advantage as they play catch-up with the dominant American players in “cloud computing”.

Yet companies and individuals may have to accept that while storing and processing their most sensitive information on servers owned by Europeans and located in Europe could keep it from the NSA’s eyes, intelligence agencies closer to home may be looking anyway.

“If you are going to have a Big Brother, I’d much rather have a domestic Big Brother than a foreign Big Brother,” said Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer at internet security company F-Secure, which also offers cloud services with data stored in the Nordic countries.

Cloud computing - an umbrella term for everything from web-based email to business software that is run remotely via the Internet instead of on-site - is being adopted by big companies and governments globally to cut costs and add flexibility to their IT departments.

In a Normandy town nestled in a loop of the Seine river lies a huge new data centre, a part of France’s Sovereign Cloud project that some in the industry once poked fun at as being out of step with the realities of the borderless Internet.