- General
- August 4, 2018
- 4 minutes read
India’s upcoming policy on cloud computing wants localization of user data
According to a new draft report as seen by Reuters from the panel working on India’s cloud computing policies, It…
According to a new draft report as seen by Reuters from the panel working on India’s cloud computing policies, It states of wanting storage data being generated in the country to be stored locally to ease for access when conducting investigations.
This comes at a time when there have been global ramp up in efforts concerning regulation over user data storage by various sides.
A policy like this could lead to high raises in costs for cloud computing companies as firms would need to increase the size and number of their data storage centers in order to keep up with the hike in costs very likely to take effect on customers who will have to pay more for cloud computing services.
Major companies like Amazon and Microsoft which both make up a huge percent of the cloud computing market could be affected by such policy along with other Indian firms who would have to migrate data generated in India back to cloud computing services in the country.
The panel working on the cloud computing policy is notable chaired by Infosys co-founder Kris Gopalakrishnan who stated of a “forward looking” data protection regime being needed in India with the country’s IT laws framework are currently “not sufficient” for cloud computing.
“We recommend localization of cloud data and any data that is stored about Indian entities or data generated in India,” The panel said, adding this data “must be available for investigative agencies and national security agencies.”
The Lobby group U.S.-India Business Council has stated of the bill raising concerns along with the organization seeking to work with the Indian government on improving the policy before its finally passed.
Major cloud computing providers in India include Google, Oracle, IBM, Salesforce, Amazon and Microsoft, 3 of which have been already listed as being registered under a government initiative on cloud computing.
Most of India’s data centers are concentrated within 5 cities as the locations represent a more suitable place for data centers with both high power and permit costs being a major factor for companies looking to set up data centers in the area.
We’ll get to see if this demand would make its way to official passage and how the involved companies with thousands of customers across the nation would adapt to this.
