Four Biggest Issues Haunting Data Centers

Privacy, secrecy, taxes, and patents. We spoke with the industry's top advocate about the four issues on every data center operator's mind.

Internet Infrastructure Coalition co-founder David Snead told us how the four issues could derail the explosive growth in data centers. Topping the list: government access to data. “Companies are starting to look a little harder about whether they're going to put data in the cloud, which is driving a lot of data center growth,” David says. “It's a worldwide issue.” David says one coalition member company saw business from outside the US drop from 70% to 30% in a year as surveillance-sensitive companies avoid US data centers. 

Closely related to this is privacy. Or more particularly, what rights companies have watching your computer usage and how they can use that data. “In an ideal world, companies and individuals would have the ability to at least know the extent of the laws that are being used to allow surveillance. And that's not happening right now,” he says. “I would argue that if companies were allowed to disclose in ways that were meaningful the amount of surveillance requests they receive it would actually help establish more confidence in the Internet economy.”

Another issue: patent trolls, the euphemism for organizations that threaten to sue users of new tech to which they've acquired a patent. Of course, the threat of suits is more a way to get an out-of-court settlement instead of paying legal fees. David says his group would like to see adoption of Texas Sen. John Cornyn's “patent troll” bill, which ups the cost of groups seeking licensing fees for patented technologies from businesses and “inserts judges into the process sooner.” Another big issue is Internet taxation. David says he'd like the Net to be free from sales and use taxes.