"Focus on the economy!" That's the new mantra coming out of Washington. However, the new economy is completely dependent on cloud services being a success. In "PRISM is Killing the US Cloud Economy," I surmised that PRISM could put a huge damper on cloud adoptions. Based on a report from the Cloud Security Alliance, there are many overseas entities dropping contracts with US-based cloud providers and even more considering the United States as a potential security threat to corporate and government data. Further, I've received many email messages from even US-based government agencies that are halting their cloud migrations due to the PRISM threat. HP itself just lost a $36 million contract with the Veteran Affairs Department.
At the time of that writing, though (even with a price tag associated with the HP/VA deal), I couldn't fathom putting an actual dollar sign on the amount of US revenue that could be lost overall because it was too hard to estimate how large the issue would become. Today, the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation has put its own price tag on the potential loss. In the report "How Much Will PRISM Cost the US Cloud Computing Industry?," the ITIF estimates that the US economy stands to lose between $22 and $35 billion over the next three years due to the PRISM fallout. And the dollar amount is just part of the loss. The report suggests that overseas cloud providers, particularly in the Asian market, will take overall market share for the cloud computing industry. Not good.
Grab the full report here (PDF): How Much Will PRISM Cost the U.S. Cloud Computing Industry?
