Storage as a (European) service.

You are all familiar with the notion “Data is the Next Intel Inside” – one of the shibboleths of Web 2.0. It is about who owns the data that is who is going to make money by providing the data for use through third applications – those third apps are called mashups.

Well data (i.e. maps) is not only a decisive element for mashups but even more important for businesses around the world.
[tag-ice]Storage[/tag-ice] is the very essence of data insofar as you need to have them available, secure, and referable. Now, going online for data storage (storage as a service) seems to be gaining momentum. There is already a lot going on, refer to: the online storage gang.

I’m in favor of all of these (vc-backed) ventures and I do like Google Apps for Business – offering services based on a lot of cheap [tag-tec]storage[/tag-tec]. Not to talk about Amazon S3 – the simple storage service.

But, imagine 80% of European business’s data on US-American servers. Just think of the next GATT or comparable negotiations.

We need more of those few European storage services and better services around that (an API for instance). Just read these enlightening articles (1 and 2) by Dion Hinchcliffe.

And please let me know of any European online storage providers comparable to the storage gang mentioned above.

[tags]business[/tags] [tags]storage[/tags] [tags]innovation[/tags]