From today’s New York Times

For years, Microsoft has let its customers in Europe, including businesses and organizations, keep their online data close to them. The company operates big data centers in Amsterdam and Dublin for that very purpose.

It now looks as if the company will deepen its commitment to letting those customers decide where their information is stored, at least partly because of concern about spying by the National Security Agency.

In an interview with The Financial Times, Brad Smith, Microsoft’s general counsel, said the company’s customers should be able to “make an informed choice of where their data resides.”

“Technology today requires that people have a high degree of trust in the services they are using ,” he told the paper. “ The events of the last year undermine some of that trust,” he said. “That is one of the reasons new steps are needed to address it.”

Interesting. In some ways, Microsoft is closer to the business community than are Google & Co. They may also be sensitive to the fact that some big European companies (e.g. Siemens) are offering European-based cloud services.