Microsoft UK datacentre plans win backing of government CTO Liam Maxwell

Government role in securing UK datacentre investment

In a post-keynote Q&A with the press, government CTO Maxwell welcomed the news, before revealing details about the work that has been going on behind the scenes for some time to entice AWS, Microsoft and others to set up their cloud stalls in the UK.

“We’ve been trying for around three years to get both of those companies to invest in the UK. We have had a long series of discussions to encourage them to do so as we see the UK as a really good market, principally, if you think about it in terms of cyber hygiene and cyber health. We’re better than most countries, and it’s the best place to do business online,” said Maxwell.

“It’s one of the best places to land business from the US, China and Korea, and we’ve always wanted to have an effective region-scale datacentre structure with the major players.”

The whole of the public sector stand to benefit from having local access to the cloud services, not just Whitehall, he added.

“We’re very happy we’ve got it, and it’s got great implications for business, local government and for lots of people who have always found the issue of data sovereignty and data location to be troubling,” he said.

“It’s going to be liberating for IT folk in the public sector, not just in central government, but all the way across. It opens up an enormous market for them, and we’ve been talking with them [providers] for a long time.”

That being said, Maxwell was keen to play down the idea that AWS and Microsoft’s UK datacentre investment has been directly spurred by the recent Safe Harbour ruling, which saw the data-sharing agreement between the US and Europe scrapped by the European Court of Justice.  

“We have no control over the Safe Harbour decision coming along at the same time, but we see this as a positive thing in that light, and it is helpful. It’s certainly not a case that one has driven the other. This has been a long conversation,” he said.