Is it planned that Confluence Cloud data to be hosted in Europe (germany best)?

[Eric PODICO Gmail]

This question is in reference to Atlassian Documentation: Atlassian Cloud storage policy

Is it planned that Confluence Cloud data to be hosted in Europe (germany best)? 

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Yes, you are missing part of the point.

Speed is part of it, but there's another massive elephant in the room.

Within the EU, It is illegal to hold certain types of data in the US.  

The laws are complex, and vary by country, but as a general principle, it is illegal to hold personal information on servers that might be covered by various acts made by the US government.  The one I remember is the Patriot act - that instantly made it illegal to hold any personal data other than that required for US Visas for EU citizens on any server in the US, across almost the entire EU.

Now, the definition of personal data varies between EU states, and the amount of permission varies too.  One example I remember is that a simple cloud application written by a UK body was allowed to hold a name and email address for users on US servers, unless they were under 16.   Then it became illegal without the written consent of their guardian(s).  In another state, it was fine at all ages, and in Germany it was illegal at ALL times.

Most EU countries can't use US servers for storing or processing personal information.  It is a legal absolute that the servers are physically within the borders of the EU, and not subject to any US government (or government agency) interference or access.

Germany has probably the strongest laws on this, hence Eric is absolutely right to be asking if there are plans to support EU minimal security requirements on Cloud while mentioning Germany.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Nope, it's not. 

In real life, the data is physically stored somewhere.  It is always possible to define that something is stored in a particular location.  This is one of the problems that "the Cloud" has - it sounds great, but as soon as you try to implement it, real life (and/or simple physics) smacks you in the head with a bunch of roses labelled "wake up and smell us". 

[Rodney Hughes]

mmmm - global politics!!

Cloud is cloud - "deliberately" undefined where your data is stored - if it is sensitive by anyone's definition to not allow it to be put it in a non-geographically aligned could, isn't a hosted instance the way to go to make sure your data is stored where you want it.

Just as clouds move across geographic lines, companies that own "things" can get sold, relocated and all sorts so is it feasible to assume a German Cloud based server will stay there?  Using the stratosphere analogy to a higher level from the earth's surface, this seems to be wanting to move to geo-stationary satellite hosting ...

Oh, all to much for me ....

[Jon Martin Solaas]

Some late words here; as long as 1) it actually matters legally where data is stored, and 2) having data relocated regularly isn't the only reason to choose cloud over hosted, I'd say yes, cloud services with "permanently localized data" is relevant. 

[Rodney Hughes]

Am I missing the point?

Simplistically speaking .... Cloud is cloud - the whole idea is that it is "not geographically aligned" and you benefit from the massive bandwidth circling the globe

OK - I know some people might say slow response times is because the info has to travel "half way around the world" but these days that is not likely to be the issue - the issue is more likely all the hops it has to go through "on the ground" from your PC to your company internet gateway to your service provider to get to the point where it flies up to the cloud. Once it is in the cloud I can imagine the latency to the server is pretty much irrelevant compared to the local ground latency so a local server still suffers that ground latency..  And then when you have "local replication servers" remember that it then takes time and bandwidth to keep the local and remote servers synchronised, so if there is a local replication server you must remember that it is still handling all the local requests and in the background still updating all the info that is being pumped into the "source" server elsewhere plus validating replication accuracy .. so have you truly improved response times??  I'd hazard a guess that it is "miliseconds" and that your problem lies in the bandwidth of your PC wifi or cable connection and your company's bandwidth to the ISP - when you can guarantee that the available bandwidth in al those hops for your personal use amongst all the other people using bandwidth is not the problem, then it might be a more credible operational use-case.

I guess the other aspect is if you really really need faster access to data on a more local server, perhaps that is the business case for your own hosted instance??

[QuentinB]

Hello,
Seems that is not really planned : https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CLOUD-6740
Some Atlassian partner offer solution for hosting in Europe