So will Google’s greatly debated floating data centres come to fruition, or is their attempt to file a patent nothing more than a pipe dream?
Well, if it were to make it from the drawing board to the high seas, there is an issue too about the data itself.
How far off the coast the data centres are to be floated will have a major impact on what data might be stored (or want to be stored) in these floating data centres.
If the data centres are to be outside the limits of sovereignty, how will the data be managed? If there are no laws governing the data, then all sorts of issues might arise.
Sure, for the ever increasing number of porn sites, this is probably a major advantage, but for us mere mortals using the internet, it could be a very different picture.
Imagine your personal data, credit card details, date of birth, address and goodness knows what other data being stored in a data centre that has now law governing the use or privacy of the data.
Unscrupulous, or just plain criminal, organisations could, and almost certainly would, target this data for use other than that originally intended – identity fraud, credit card theft, etc.
Since there would be no law governing the use and storage of the data, who would be responsible?
We shall all be watching to see just how progress is made and whether floating data centres are the way of the future!
Migration Solutions is the computer room and data centre specialist;providing independent, vendor-neutral services in Data Centre Build, Data Centre Consultancy, Data Centre Operations and Data Centre Migration.
Have you read these related articles?
Newsletter:
