Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft May Halt the Expansion of a UK Datacenter Due To Brexit (onmsft.com)
On Monday, Microsoft hosted an online event to discuss the impact of the UK's departure from the European Union on the tech industry. The company currently has two large datacentres in the UK, and it is expanding those in response to vigorous demand for cloud services. But Brexit could throw a spanner in the works. From a report: Microsoft's UK Government Affairs Manager Owen Larter said, "We're really keen to avoid import tariffs on any hardware. Going back to the datacenter example, we're looking to build out our datacenters at a pretty strong lick in the UK, because the market is doing very well. If all of a sudden there are huge import [tariffs] on server racks from China or from eastern Europe, where a lot of them are actually assembled, that might change our investment decisions and perhaps we build out our datacenters across other European countries." Simply put, if they cannot build in Britain, then they will build surrounding it. Currently, the data is shared freely between the EU countries without any issues. This is because they all have similar security between them. However, if the UK leaves the EU, then this could cause even more issues for Microsoft.
The British goverment can't be that stupid.
Erm, have you ever seen the British government?
SJW n. One who posts facts.
With the announcement by May that she wants a hard Brexit, companies have started to announce that they are either leaving or starting to plan for that eventuality. HSBC has already announced 1000 jobs moving to France.
It's highly relevant because now is the time that we really need to fight to set the goals of the negotiation. Today's High Court ruling is only a partial victory for the ignored majority who don't want hard Brexit. We need to lobby our representatives now, by the time we leave in a couple of years it will be way too late.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
UK didn't simply close up shop
As far as being an engineering and product producing capital serving some 500million people, ... yes they most definitely did. You don't just threaten companies with tariffs on the vast majority of their products, supplies, reduce their labour access, and generally horrendously fuck with the political stability of your manufacturing only to call the companies who investigate leaving "stupid".
I get your sentiment, but I think that is unfair. A lot of brexiters I have met when I used to travel around up North for work, were quite well meaning people who had simply been fed the lie that the EU causes all their problems for the last twenty years. Anytime their politicians stuffed up, went back on a promise or just flat out neglected them, along would come UKIP or a tabloid to start blaming the EU for the problem, and successive Labour and Tory governments quietly stepped aside to let it happen.
Many parts of England have never recovered from being decimated by Thatcher (I think many of the reforms were required, but they simply left towns to rot, rather than help with any sort of transition), and the convenient scape-goat for politicians doing nothing about this has been the EU. It has been the ultimate case of getting caught in a lie, and it amazes me that rather than anyone admitting that areas outside London have been neglected and need more focus, they are just going through with the foot shooting operation.
The Leave voters wanted the immigrants to leave so they:
1. Would get their jobs back
2. Would stop terrorism
3. Would not have to deal with others culture
Of course it didn't work that way, but that's why Brexit happened.
This is one of the most frustrating things about Brexit. Business is full of uncertainties, but now we have this convenient scapegoat to blame for everything. It's hard to determine whether businesses are actually suffering as a result of either changes due to the Brexit issue or genuine uncertainty around them, or whether those businesses are just trying to find a politically acceptable place to assign blame for other problems/failures. Likewise, it's hard to determine whether Brexit plans are really causing a lot of problems, or whether businesses are just blowing smoke and hoping to get more favourable treatment from the UK government in some way by threatening to leave/downsize/whatever.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.