This morning I moderated
HostingCon's Tuesday keynote:
the future of service delivery.
The initial title of this panel was the “control panel smack-down.”
Because the nature of the industry is quickly evolving, the panel was broadened to include other industry experts.
While no legal issues came up right in the keynote, what did occur to me was the issue of responsibility for data.
All of the panelists talked about different ways customers may use their resources and focused particularly on data storage.
Changing what you do with customer and third party data has real legal implications. How many hosts out there even know who owns the data on their servers, what they can do with it, and their responsibility for handling it? As hosts begin to market their services for off line back up, or, more reasonably, for outsourced exchange, their liability profile changes versus simply hosting brochure ware. I won't comment on the general panel consensus that hosts need to stop marketing increased storage and bandwidth, except to say that I'll believe it when I see it.
Interesting session, for sure. I suppose a panel benefits quite a bit when not everyone up there is 100 percent on the same page. I was planning on posting something from the audience's perspective a little later today. WITH pictures.