Comments on: Rackspace confirms dedicated Sydney datacentre

By: VooVoo

VooVoo — Fri, 07 Sep 2012 15:31:33 +0000

Papering over the cracks.

If a cloud vendor tells you that it’s OK now because they’ve opened a datacentre in your backyard, watch out. The mere fact of locating a datacentre in Australia will not remove the possibility of that company (say US owned) from being required to divulge your data under any one of a number of measures, most notably the USA Patriot Act. It’s true, governments do have bi lateral treaties for handling these sorts of requests normally, but those routes involve serious checks and balances. The sort of friction that tends to be overlooked in the name of expediency.
The real issues are in fact symbolised by the iceberg problem. The legislation and application of the Patriot “toolbox” are the known unknowns, visible above the surface. Lurking underneath and mostly unfathomable are the costs of not complying and the business disruption caused by duelling in an overseas jurisdiction, the unknown unknowns. No amount of risk management and business continuity can prepare a business for this sort of upheaval.
No smart business would enter into such an uncontrolled experiment, as that is exactly what using an overseas owned hosting vendor would become. US legal firms are advising clients in Australia to “consider the security and confidentiality risks posed by the Patriot Act and to store their data with providers which do not have any US connections.”
The truth is, an unpleasant situation has yet to arise, therefore no one knows exactly how this might play out. Do you want to be the guinea pig? Prudent decision making dictates that this should be left for others. Why would you go there?

Ask the vendor to provide and indemnity clause in their SLA with you that specifies they will cover your expenses etc for challenging disputed collection of data.

By: ConNetU

ConNetU — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 14:20:04 +0000

It seems strange that Australia would in anyway against a move of this nature. Surely, it is an inevitable move and will help security? Hosting overseas and being subject to overseas data laws buts you in quite a precarious position, no?

Thanks, Paul @ ConNetU

By: Renai LeMay

Renai LeMay — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 08:07:06 +0000

“The main game in my view is SaaS/PaaS in terms of creating really new possibilities to access truely innovative bundles of people+process+technology as a catalyst for business innovation. It will be much more exciting, and transformative, when one of the leading SaaS providers decides to plonk a data centre in Australia …”

I keep on nagging them about this at every opportunity ;)

As for Jim Fagan’s comments, yes, I think this is accurate — Australians have always paid a lot more for local bandwidth than we do overseas. This has been one of the main justifications for high local hosting costs for years.

By: Dr Steve Hodgkinson

Dr Steve Hodgkinson — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 05:53:07 +0000

This is an interesting and good announcement … I’m with Renai in terms of seeing it as a good development and also that many folks will take comfort from the local footprint (rightly or wrongly). These vendors tend to bring an ecosystem along with them and their skills at selling the whole cencept of cloud services will help to stimulate the growth of this market. This is, however, just IaaS … which is concerned mainly with reducing costs in ways that is really only visible within the IT department.

The main game in my view is SaaS/PaaS in terms of creating really new possibilities to access truely innovative bundles of people+process+technology as a catalyst for business innovation. It will be much more exciting, and transformative, when one of the leading SaaS providers decides to plonk a data centre in Australia …

As an aside – what did folks think of the comments made by Jim Fagan, managing director of Rackspace in Asia Pacific, that the local services will be more expensive than the global services due to broadband costs? Is that right? Will this give the local telco+cloud services providers an edge?

By: Steven

Steven — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 04:53:33 +0000

I hope this includes Rackspace cloud backup services. Coupled with the NBN, I can see a lot more local players entering the market offering Australian backup services for small business and personal users.

By: Andy

Andy — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 04:25:08 +0000

Also don’t forget regulatory issues around privately identifiable information (PII) and regulatory/legal issues alongside preference and latency. The certifications most importantly reflect operational behaviours (whether fanatical or not) that show operational prudence. A vital security component which is difficult to achieve, yet of such critical importance that a single failure can negate any amount of security investment if missed. It will be interesting to see how Rackspace intend to service New Zealand.

By: Samuel

Samuel — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 04:21:24 +0000

They have yet to confirm that they are providing the services from this datacenter that will help the local industry the most.
Their product details page only lists managed services and private cloud stuff.

If their cheaper options (unmanaged cloud servers) aren’t available in Sydney this is just an effort to appease bigger customers, and wont do anything to improve things for local companies trying to use cloud services at the cheap end, such as cash strapped innovators building new ideas, early stage startups tight on funding, or tech hobbyists/students who want to use the services to experiment or learn using their own money.

By: Dean

Dean — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 06:20:19 +0000

There’s also the issue of latency. A service hosted in the U.S. has a minimum round-trip latency of about 150-200ms. I’ve done comparisons on some of my websites between a U.S.-hosted server and an Australian-hosted one, and the difference is pretty dramatic.

Of course, comparisons of this nature are hard to do apples-to-apples, but my experience at least is that Australia-hosted is definitely the way to go if you’re serving a largely Australian audience.

By: Renai LeMay

Renai LeMay — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 05:24:51 +0000

Hey Yo,

a lot of people agree with you, but a lot don’t. There are very many organisations and people (myself included) which would much rather see their data hosted in Australia and subject to Australian laws than hosted overseas. Like it or not, it’s a major issue here.

Renai

By: Yo

Yo — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 05:11:38 +0000

“where I emphasised that I wouldn’t take the company seriously until it had Australian infrastructure”

That’s an odd statement. Rackspace is one of the biggest hosting providers in the world. They’re the primary backers of OpenStack, they offer a range of services used by many large sites and customers, and their ‘fanatical support’ has a great reputation. Surely that’s enough for them to be taken seriously.

The ‘demand’ for local hosting is a sad reflection on the Australian market. It’s almost entirely driven by data sovereignty regulation (mostly unnecessary) and Australia’s persistent high prices on international transit.

We should encourage the use of international services, and stop waving the Australian flag at something as banal as hosting. Data is data…