Working with EU: Does location matter?

With the launch of SM 2.1 (yeah, yeah, looking forward, you’ll get the details on Monday folks!) and its commercial nature I have to cross the unglobalization bridge that the US has been burning and pissing on for quite some time – nobody trusts having their data in the good ol’ USA. Even care free Canadian’s are hating the Patriot Act. So it’s sever shipping time.

As far as I have been told, UK businesses have to disclose if any confidential data is going to be stored on the servers outside of EU. I may be wrong (if I am, please correct me) but I have heard the same from users in France, Germany, Italy, etc. One question I do have is, does it matter where in the EU the servers are located? I am currently considering Netherlands and Germany.

For Australia, I am still working on it. There may be a significant premium to having a localized server (20–40% depending on the number of users – the 2 IT shops in Malta are pretty much screwed) and some places are just not going to be possible at all due to the IP allocation restrictions.