History 2005: New Enormous European Storage Market

A new proposal to combat terrorism at the Council of the European Union in Brussels, Belgium, by France, Ireland, Sweden and the UK, could lead to an enormous new  market for storage companies.

The  countries involved need to take the necessary measures to ensure that  the data of public telecom networks be preserved “for the purpose of prevention, investigation, detection and prosecution  of crime and criminal offenses  including terrorism.”

And this with  an implementation period of as little as 12 months and no more than 36 months.

The telecoms and ISPs will also have to ensure the confidentiality and integrity of the data, of course, as well as their destruction at the end of the compliance  period.

The new regulations apply to providers of fixed and mobile phone services, SMS operators and ISPs, not only for email but also for voice over IP.

Companies will have to preserve data relating to the source, routing, destination, time, date, duration of communications and the location of the telecom device used.

Finalization of the new rules is expected by June of this year, with compliance over the 2 following years. 

We can already picture vendors of EMC Centera and NetApp’s  NearStore drooling at the prospect, but we can also expect to hear a certain outcry from the companies that will be subjected to the new regulations, since the cost will be far from negligible.      

This article is an abstract of news published on issue 205 on January 2005 from the former paper version of Computer Data  Storage Newsletter.