RSSWhy to consider where your Apps are
In the midst of the fallout over Google's break with China this week, the Internet company's enterprise-oriented Apps team hastened to put out an announcement reassuring customer's all over the world that their dispute would not affect the delivery of Apps services, in large part because no Apps services or data are hosted in China. And in case you were worried about a hostile takeover of the local Google offices, the team also assures you that their China staff do not have any access to Apps systems or data… a frightening proactive step that speaks to the degree of threat the company feels from the Chinese government.
The most heartening thing that I find in the article is a moderately veiled suggestion that Chinese users continue using Google services by proxy, VPN, or SSH tunneling, a stance I was hoping to see taken much more forcefully by the company. I guess a little resistance is better than none. The cautionary lesson in the tale, though, is the extent to which governments are beginning to frame the technical and operational scope of business use of the Internet, and the degree to which businesses need to consider such limitations when outsourcing services.
China is today's headline, but it's not the only place to watch out for. Political stability has always been a consideration for outsourcing, but political reliability might be equally important. You probably have a pretty good idea what sorts of services not to locate on Chinese servers already. You might also be pretty blase about making hosting arrangements within the US, but as Amazon is finding, increasingly desperate taxing authorities all around the country are making that perilous as well. The new buzz is all about whether or not you have a "nexus" in a state that might allow it to try to claim some tax on operations that pass through there. With courts continually befuddled by technology and its implications, and legislatures unable to write code that keeps up with the state of the art, you might find yourself pinned by nonsensical laws written by grasping politicians that are every bit as harmful to you as Chinese censors.
