American computer companies are losing customers over NSA leaks Excerpts: Revelations about vast US data collection programs are starting to hit American tech companies, which are ramping up pressure for increased transparency to try to mitigate the damage. An industry group, the Cloud Security Alliance said last month that 10 percent of its non-US members have cancelled a contract with a US-based cloud provider, and 56 percent said they were less likely to use an American company. A separate report this month by the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation, or ITIF, a Washington think tank, said US cloud providers stand to lose $22 billion to $35 billion over the next three years due to revelations about the so-called PRISM program. The report notes that the United States dominates the cloud computing market both domestically and abroad, and that US firms could lose between 10 and 20 percent of the foreign market in the next few years. And Forrester Research analyst James Staten argued that, in addition to the loss of foreign customers, US customers may look overseas for cloud services, and the rest of the tech sector could also see an impact. "Add it all up and you have a net loss for the service provider space of about $180 billion by 2016, which would be roughly a 25 percent decline in the overall IT services market," Staten said. businessinsider/prism-the-nsa-leaks-are-starting-to-hit-the-bottom-lines-of-tech-companies-2013-8
Posted on: Tue, 27 Aug 2013 20:54:48 +0000