A local cloud for local people

So if businesses are going to make the most of the cloud to make their IT infrastructure more flexible and more cost effective, they need a strong, European market for cloud services. The recent announcement of a European cloud computing offering from Rackspace, the Texas-based hosting and cloud computing provider, is a step in the right direction.

Without naming names, there is a feeling among CIOs and IT directors that some of the largest cloud service providers have a rather "take it or leave it" attitude to foreign companies with specific, if not necessarily onerous, security and privacy requirements.

If a vendor with the size and scale of Rackspace thinks it is worth investing in Europe - and specifically the UK - for its cloud computing operations that has to be good news for both European businesses that want to use the cloud, and for the UK IT industry.

Stephen Pritchard is a contributing editor at IT PRO.