ClearDB, Heroku, and Cloud Database Jurisdiction

ClearDB, one of the cloud database products listed in the Database as a Service (DbaaS) Product Directory, is now available as a Heroku add-on. I won’t repeat everything you could read elsewhere. Instead, I’ll focus on a thought that crossed my mind when I read more about ClearDB.

In the blog post announcing the ClearDB add-on for Heroku it states:

ClearDB is an affordable and powerful database-as-a-service solution that provides geographically distributed, highly available MySQL database services to the cloud.  With ClearDB, you will stay connected to your database even if entire regions of the Internet experience sudden, pervasive service outages.

Cool, I get it, ClearDB is making it database replication and high availability easy. But what’s missing from the ClearDB web site is a statement that explains, in detail, data access jurisdiction issues that you should understand and consider before you go replicating your data all over the world.

Granted, cloud data jurisdiction is not an issue that’s specific to any one cloud data storage solution such as ClearDB — I don’t mean to pick on ClearDB. Nonetheless, I believe that all such vendors that provide you the ability to store your data in the cloud need to give us more information and a better understanding about such legal considerations so that we can make wise decisions for our businesses.