How the law dictates data gravity in the cloud

I’ve spoken quite a bit to date about the application-centric nature of cloud computing, and how this changes the nature of operations for the enterprise. That’s all so then and good, nevertheless it should be quickly apparent that there are some constraints out there that limit what options a team has in where to place and run cloud applications.

If law will as a matter of fact have such an influence on cloud computing dynamics, it occurs to me that a new cost factor might outshine simple operations when it comes to choosing where to run systems; namely, legality itself. As businesses seek to optimize business processes to deliver the most competitive advantage at the lowest costs, it is quite likely that they will seek out ways to leverage legal loopholes around the world to get around barriers in any one country

It turns out that instead of taking advantage of loopholes and economic advantages in the law, business might find themselves being forced to distribute their applications in specific ways just to stay within the bounds of the same law.

Are there ways out of adherence to data “gravity,” and consequently legal restrictions to workload placement? There may be. Check out McCrory’s follow up post on Defying Data Gravity, for instance. However even most of those options are about using distribution to ease the pain of data gravity from a pure innovation perspective. They don’t usually address the pain of keeping data within political and legal boundaries during continuing to meet the performance and availability objectives of the users of that data.