James Staten at Forrester writes: Earlier this month The Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF) published a prediction that the U.S. cloud computing industry stands to lose up to $35 billion by 2016 thanks to the National Security Agency (NSA) PRISM project, leaked to the media in June. We think this estimate is too low and could be as high as $180 billion or a 25% hit to overall IT service provider revenues in that same timeframe. That is, if you believe the assumption that government spying is more a concern than the business benefits of going cloud.
Having read through the thoughtful analysis by Daniel Castro at ITIF, we commend him and this think tank on their reasoning and cost estimates. However the analysis really limited the impact to the actions of non-US corporations. The high-end figure, assumes US-based cloud computing providers would lose 20% of the potential revenues available from the foreign market. However we believe there are two additional impacts that would further be felt from this revelation:
1. US customers would also bypass US cloud providers for their international and overseas business – costing these cloud providers up to 20% of this business as well.
2. Non-US cloud providers will lose as much as 20% of their available overseas and domestic opportunities due to other governments taking similar actions. [Continue reading…]
How wonderful this reads, if you’re a terrorist organization. The crowd who can’t shoot straight. If any group can produce a clusterfuck, it’s the Military led institutions here in the U.S. Oh, and let’s not forget those other members who sit in their Ivory Towers being paid directly/indirectly by the American taxpayer while if effect, dispensing advice that feeds those same terrorist organizations. Time for the Tar & Feathers to come out on a grand scale.