Does your data still call Australia home?

A recent Microsoft Cloud Adoption Study among small to medium businesses found a strong desire for local services among customers in Australia.

The Australian cloud services sector

Research firm IDC recently predicted the Australian cloud services sector would be worth more than $2 billion by 2015. It said 94.2 per cent of companies expect to implement cloud computing services by 2013.

How this revenue will be split geographically is not but clear, however even the offshore giants are beginning to recognise the need for some local capabilities with the US-based Amazon Web Services, for instance, keeping data stored in five regions. The company's rumoured Australian presence could allow data sovereignty concerns to be addressed far more willingly in the future.

Archer points to a number of early cloud-computing successes as evidence that government departments can tap into the cloud infrastructure on demand without being stunted by data sovereignty concerns.

Australia recently ranked fifth out of 14 regional countries as a cloud services destination in the Asia Cloud Computing Association's Cloud Readiness Index.  It said the country's "strong policy environment provides a predictable environment for cloud services" and lauded initiatives just as the NBN which will our anomalous broadband quality rating.