blog There’s a lot to like in the announcements made by iconic technology giant Apple this morning in the US. iOS 5 will bring some long-awaited enhancements to the iPhone, iPad and iPod, OS X Lion is looking sweet, cheap and convenient (no more DVDs, no sir), and the ability to synch your iTunes library to the cloud is something people have been writing hacking guides for forever. Now you can do it officially.

However, we can’t help but wonder whether Apple has just created a fistful of headaches for large Australian organisations with its broader iCloud service, which allows users to synch office documents, calendar, mail and contacts online. After all, like other cloud giants Google, Microsoft, Salesforce.com and Amazon, it’s not as if Apple will be serving that data from an Australian datacentre. This morning Apple supremo Steve Jobs said the company had built a new datacentre in North Carolina to help with iCloud, and website Data Center Knowledge lists the other known Apple datacentres; all also based in the US.

“Apple said its is “ready to ramp iCloud in its three datacentres.” Apple also has existing datacentres in Newark, Calif. and on its Cupertino headquarters campus. In April, Apple signed a seven-year lease for 2.28 megawatts of critical power load in a new datacentre being built in Santa Clara, Calif. by DuPont Fabros Technology (DFT), a leading developer of wholesale datacentre space. The Santa Clara facility would provide Apple with additional capacity on the West Coast.”

It’s clear that many Australians working in large organisations are already using iPhones and iPad in their professional lives. Many organisations — especially in government — have stringent requirements around the storage of company information such as email and documents on servers physically located in Australia, to prevent legal access by US Government authorities, for example.

Westpac’s top-level executives use their iPads in board meetings. Communications Minister Stephen Conroy uses an iPhone in his everyday life. What happens when this sort of high-level Australian starts automatically synching their sensitive data to Apple’s cloud, is anyone’s guess. Thoughts?

Image credit: Apple