Matters of government policy need to be determined in the area of cloud computing before the burgeoning new industry can come into its own in the U.S.

That was the primary message coming out of cloud computing forum hosted by Google last week. The search giant has been criticized recently for not adequately safeguarding information that they store in that cloud, and the forum was a way to address that issue. The forum drew the attention of a number of government and industry experts on the matter.

Bernard Golden, CEO of HyperStratus, said, “Cloud computing is accelerating in adoption. The policy stuff is a big impediment. This is a place where the government has a strong role to play.” Others in attendance at the forum included Jeffrey Rayport of the consulting firm Marketspace and Andrew Heyward, former president of CBS News. At the event, Rayport and Heyward released a study detailing factors that could influence the success and growth of cloud computing.

The report included the admonishment that the U.S. government had a role to play in the growth of the industry, especially as it relates to privacy and other policies, according to a CNET article. Rayport said, “It is an irony that your rights to privacy are different once (your) data exists on the cloud. That’s a problem. These really are policy issues that, without being resolved, we don’t have a robust proposition [for a strong industry].”

The panelists agreed that legislation on policy was necessary, but that the wrong kind of legislation could cripple U.S. dominance in cloud computing, singling out the Patriot Act as an example. Rayport summarized by saying, “It may have noble elements, but the simple fact is we are seeing (negative) things happen as a result of this type of legislation. Data traffic on the Internet is being routed around the United States. There are cloud providers looking for safer places to put data centers, one being Switzerland. Those government decisions have huge impacts on the unfolding of the cloud vision.”

Once again, as with the Internet, the government of the United states is being asked to make policy decisions that could affect an entire area of technology. It may well be that lesser is better in the case of cloud computing, as well. There are a number of privacy and rights issues that need to be determined, but legislation on issues of control should once again be left to the free marketplace.

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Entry was posted on Saturday, March 21st, 2009 at 2:56 pm under Google, Internet, Legal, Politics, Technology.

Read more entries by Michael W. Jones.
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