

Would you pay for a Google Enterprise-esque service hosted in Scandinavia? - Scandinavia007

Forgive me as I post this from a throwaway account, but I have been a member here for a few years:<p>Given the recent rash of privacy-related concerns and the increasingly-concerning intrusive behavior of the US government in the affairs of its businesses and their customers, I have seen a growing trend of many US-based companies looking to host customers' sensitive data and private information out of the United States to avoid being forced to compromise the privacy and integrity of their users.<p>I am a "serial entrepreneur" with a successful track record that is seriously considering launching a "Google Enterprise"-like service hosted in one of the Scandinavian nations, with the twist of focusing first and foremost on the privacy of the client.<p>The core services would initially be similar to the basic hosted enterprise features (email/webmail, contacts, documents, calendar, etc.) potentially expanding into AWS-like territory, structured in a way where we would be able to guarantee the privacy and integrity of any information hosted with us. There would be a very strong focus on encryption and security in general.<p>While I do believe that this is a lucrative business opportunity, this would be a very big step for me as I do not live in Scandinavia; but I genuinely feel that this is a concern that needs to be addressed sooner rather than later as I have seen a shocking number of posts here on HN detailing cases where startups and businesses have been unable to offer or continue offering particular services given the current political weather in the USA.<p>Basically, if such a service were to exist would you as a business pay for such a hosted solution? And as an individual (a la Gmail)?
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dalke
Why would hosting in Scandinavia be any better/worse than another European
country?

I speak now of Sweden. How do you guarantee that Saepo can't get access to the
data, given the recent law which allows them to tap international connections
without a warrant?

There's already cloud-computing companies in Sweden, like City-Cloud at
<http://www.citycloud.eu/> . What do you plan to offer which is new? This is a
country where high schools are moving over to cloud-based systems, as in
[http://www.cloudtweaks.com/2011/06/swedish-high-schools-
depl...](http://www.cloudtweaks.com/2011/06/swedish-high-schools-deploy-
google-cloud/) so it's not an inexperienced market.

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Scandinavia007
The EU aside, there are various country-specific policies and legislations
that make certain Scandinavian countries better than others for this kind of
thing. I was actually thinking more along the lines of Iceland than Sweden,
but haven't made the final decision.

Protection from wiretapping, etc. would be accomplished technically (no non-
encrypted connections); the benefit of the location is primarily to prevent
FBI-like seizures of datacenters and warrantless handovers of data.

The reason I'm considering this an untapped market is because to the best of
my knowledge, there aren't any such companies _selling to American
enterprises_ verses their individual local markets.

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dalke
Iceland is a Nordic country but not a Scandinavian country. At least, that's
the definition the people in the Nordic countries use.

Iceland is often mentioned as a site for cloud computing, given its mid-
Atlantic location and access to geothermal power and cooling. For example,
GreenQloud has Amazon-compatible APIs and offers 100% carbon neutral hosting.
They've also been selling to American enterprises. I'm surprised you haven't
heard of them since it's mentioned in many of the top search results for
"Iceland cloud computing."

American companies are still required to uphold US law, so American data even
hosted overseas is still subject to "warrantless handovers of data." Eg, if
the FBI came with a national security letter to a US company, then that
company would be required to present that data no matter where it's located.

The only advantage I can see for doing this is if the company itself was under
suspicion (vs. customers of the company) then at least the company would know
of any such investigation.

