Yet Another James Green Web Developer, Aquarist

Amazon: No UK Datacenter planned

It was a slightly disappointing day yesterday. I had managed to organise one of Amazon UK's sales representatives to call my employer for a chat about our potential use of their cloud technologies.

Background: We have an app perfect for expansion into the cloud. However, many of our customers require their data held within England due to Data Protection Act and related laws & regulations. Closest Amazon gets to meeting our needs is their Ireland datacenter.

Do we gave our Amazon contact a brief background. His reply was really threefold:

1. No UK datacenter planned (disappointing bit)
2. Amazon are represented in Government plans for IT advice surrounding the future use of cloud technologies and hope to see some documentation emerging next year
3. Humans (our customers, our customers' customers) may not want their personal details outside the UK irrespective of legal protections offered

The second point is being partly driven by the CESG - a division of GCHQ. For us, our customer's data would need ranking on the Government's Business Impact Levels. Most data never reaches higher than level three, apparently. However, Amazon UK are working to ensure their Irish datacenter provides facilities capable of hosting data up to level three (from my memory of the conversation, you'll understand).

The third point is based on what we believe to be true: that Irish Data Protection laws are based on EU frameworks, as the UK ones are apparently. They should therefore be broadly similar and compatible with each other. So, our customers should (given legal assurances) be happy to see their customers' data held in Ireland. However, whether their customers will be happy with that no-one really has any idea.