Compliance and Mergers and Clouds, Oh My!

More data in fewer hands, more consumer information available to advertisers and possible privacy breaches are inevitable consequences of "cloud" computing and mega media mergers like that of satellite radio services Sirius and XM, according to some keeping a close eye on the current trend of content amassment.

"Cloud" computing has been the mainstay of the likes of Amazon, Google and Yahoo. The "old-timers" like IBM, HP and Microsoft are jumping on-board offering SaaS and a variety of hosted services to replace traditional in-house systems like e-mail, CRM and web-content management, to name a few.

Our very existence is becoming entrenched in the cloud; lives are chronicled on blogs which for the most part reside on remote servers. Our images are uploaded to sites like Flickr. The under-the-coffee-table photo album is quickly becoming obsolete.

Even the radio airways are moving toward becoming one single mass. The recent merge of XM and Sirius has initiated even more debate than the one over who is funnier -- Howard Stern or Opie and Anthony? Blogger Roger Ehrenberg called the merger a potential, "Ad-driven Google in the sky:"

When the services are integrated, you'll have a broader array of programming available than if you were a subscriber to only one... And even before more subscribers join, SIRI/XMSR will have 13 million+ legacy subscribers from which to entice advertisers.

But wait; remember that stuff we were talking about concerning the ability to deliver targeted ads locally (terrestrial repeaters dotting the densely populated, high-value landscape)? And remember the unique ID that each receiver has? And you know how SIRI and XMSR "push" information to subscribers, whether it is the name of a song, an artist, a sports score, the url of an advertiser (in the case of SIRI), whatever? What if they started to "pull" information concerning station choice, location, time of day receiver is active, length of time receiver is active, maybe user-provided preferences concerning various interests (restaurants, concerts, merchandise, etc.)? What's to stop them from delivering tailored advertisements and content recommendations to you, a la Google and contextual advertising?"

Ehrenberg's musings are certainly plausible. As content becomes more centralized, it becomes easier for advertisers to garner information about who is accessing what. Dean Collins, in his blog, ponders what he deems, "the 'cloud'ification of content," after the court ruling that allowed Cablevision to proceed with remote DVR services (where DVR recordings are no longer housed on a local hard drive, instead centralized on Cablevision's network) was made:

Basically what 'I' think this ruling means is that the United States Southern District Appeals Court has approved is the 'Cloud'ification of your entertainment content.

The continuing migration of data off of individual's hard drives and onto remote networks administered by a narrowing group of companies leads to many questions of privacy and responsibility. Lori MacVittie, at F5.DevCenteral.com, points out the problems businesses may face with compliance regulations:

"There are still questions to be answered that have yet to be addressed with cloud computing, such as compliance with regulations like Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX), PCI DSS, HIPAA, and SP 1386." "It's nice to not have to worry about the infrastructure that's delivering your applications 'out there in the cloud,' but there still needs to be an awareness of what that infrastructure is in order to rest a bit easier at night."

Undoubtedly, with the surge of data aggregation, many concerns regarding privacy, compliance regulations and advertising tactics will continue to increase as well.