MS: Government cloud compliance a key challenge

Mark Rees (pictured), National Technology Officer for Microsoft New Zealand, believes there are three main barriers currently  facing cloud adoption.

In a recent interview, to be posted in full later this week, Rees said that data sovereignty, privacy and government compliance requirements were New Zealand’s biggest cloud challenges.

“Issues around data sovereignty, privacy and compliance requirements of the governments are the key barriers to adoption in terms of policy,” he said. “There’s also a big trust thing. You’re giving your data away to someone, you don’t know where it is and you’re trusting them to look after it. That’s a big thing.”

Over time Rees believes that the physical location of where their data is being kept will be less of an issue than it is today.

“At the moment physical location of data matters for lots of people but over time that won’t matter. In 20 or 30 years’ time no one will really care where their data is located. What will matter though are the guarantees about how it will be protected and whether it’s accessible or not.”