Australian online software company Saasu announced yesterday it had moved almost all its data infrastructure to Australia from the US, including the application database and user data.
The software will be backed up to data centres in Hong Kong.
A number of contributing factors influenced the move from the US such as data privacy, latency and geopolitical risks. Software hosted offshore is one of the most commonly cited objections by accounting firms.
“Most of the advisors we talked to vastly preferred having their data here in Australia, they’re much more comfortable with that than having it overseas,” says Marc Lehmann, Saasu CEO.
Snowden Sets Precedent
Saasu was concerned about privacy and security issues in the US, Lehmann says.
“Since the NSA event with [Edward] Snowden and other events, it has become clearer that the US government is going to look at data more readily without the same level of concern for the privacy rights of individuals and corporations,” Lehmann says.
“We have always said if we felt the US government went beyond the intent of the original meaning of the Patriot Act, and didn’t pull back from that at some stage, that we would have to move our data back to Australia. So that has eventuated and we’ve decided to make the move.”
Rackspace Australia is subject to Australian laws and regulations, and Saasu and its customers will be protected by the Privacy Act, Lehmann says.
Concern about data sovereignty among accountants is increasing, but primarily in reaction to events, Lehmann adds.
“Geopolitically, there’s been a lot more tension between the USA and China and the USA and Russia, and I think there’s increased risk of data being more vulnerable when there’s political risk as well as privacy risk, in terms of security agencies observing data,” Lehmann says.
“The outlier event of data being observed goes up, the risk of data being observed goes up. I think Australia is seen to be such a safe area that it requires subpoenas to look up data.”
Not Just Closer – Faster
After US hosting company Rackspace established a data centre in Australia, Lehmann had the opportunity to move Saasu onshore with only a 5 percent to 10 percent increase in cost to the software company.
“Rackspace are here now in Australia, and they have been such a good host company that it has just removed a lot of risk in us making this move,” Lehmann says. Saasu users in Australia will find the software much faster, in part due to the shorter distance between users and the data centre, Lehmann says.
“We’ve [also] implemented a lot more infrastructure this time. We’ve increased the amount of service we have and the newer servers are more powerful so [customers] get a performance pick up from that,” says Lehmann.
