Will NSA PRISM Really Cost U.S. Cloud Services Providers Billions?

U.K.-based Internet services company Netcraft‘s web server survey released this week potentially contradicts a recent forecast spelling doom for U.S.-based cloud providers. The dire forecast said that the U.S. cloud computing industry could lose $22 billion and $35 billion in total revenue by 2016 due to news about the National Security Agency (NSA) PRISM surveillance program.  Netcraft said its own data shows this isn’t true.

Netcraft’s recent survey showed that 47 sites have moved to the United States since the PRISM program was revealed, resulting in a net positive migration to the United States.

The firm said that within the most popular 10 thousand sites, only 40 sites moved away from U.S.-based hosting companies. Netcraft said the trend is also reflected by the entire web server survey, where a net sum of 270 thousand sites moved to the United States from other countries (in total, 3.9 million sites moved to the United States, while 3.6 million moved from the United States). Germany was the most popular departure country, with nearly 1.2 million sites moving from German hosting companies. This was followed by Canada, where 803 thousand sites moved to the United States.

Those results so far contradict a recent forecast by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) which predicted the revenue decline hitting U.S.-based cloud providers as a result of recent PRISM revelations.

“Despite speculation that the recent PRISM revelations would result in a mass exodus from American data centers and web hosting companies, Netcraft has not yet seen any evidence of this,” Netcraft’s report said.

Last week, cloud data protection solutions provider PerspecSys, also defended the safety of U.S.-based cloud providers by stressing that these providers are safe, as long as they have the right security and privacy in place.