This trend pre-dates the NSA scandal, at least from my European perspective. The US government has legally given it's intelligence and security agencies the right to secretly claim access to data stored by American companies including data not physically stored in the US.
As a result, it's not just a matter of non-US companies and citizens not wanting to store data with US companies, in many if not most cases it's not even legal for them to do so.
As a European company, I have to give certain guarantees about the protection and usages of privacy sensitive data. Storing it under the jurisdiction of a country that does not respect that is out of the question.
This has nothing to do with any illegal activities by the NSA or their non-American counterparts. This is the existing legal regime of the US.
Of course the NSA scandal has highlighted the facts that any guarantees the US so far has given about not abusing this are null and void. From the US can get use data, it has now become the US will us your data. That will significantly and irreversibly speed up the process of taking data out of US companies.
But the process itself had already started, it is just a very slow process (no corporation or government can drastically alter their IT infrastructure within a short term). The real effects won't be felt until another five to ten years, if not more.
As a result, it's not just a matter of non-US companies and citizens not wanting to store data with US companies, in many if not most cases it's not even legal for them to do so.
As a European company, I have to give certain guarantees about the protection and usages of privacy sensitive data. Storing it under the jurisdiction of a country that does not respect that is out of the question.
This has nothing to do with any illegal activities by the NSA or their non-American counterparts. This is the existing legal regime of the US.
Of course the NSA scandal has highlighted the facts that any guarantees the US so far has given about not abusing this are null and void. From the US can get use data, it has now become the US will us your data. That will significantly and irreversibly speed up the process of taking data out of US companies.
But the process itself had already started, it is just a very slow process (no corporation or government can drastically alter their IT infrastructure within a short term). The real effects won't be felt until another five to ten years, if not more.