 Welcome to Newsdesk on SiliconANGLE TV for Thursday, September 27th, 2012. I'm Kristen Folletti. The European Commission has unveiled a high-level cloud services strategy with the aim of adding $206 billion to the region's economy by 2020. With us now is SiliconANGLE contributor John Casaretto with breaking analysis on the E.C.'s announcement today. Welcome, John. Good morning. So, tell us about the European Commission's plan and what they plan to include in their cloud strategy. Well, thus far, what they've released officially is pretty high-level, but the message was very strong in terms of getting collaboration, in terms of they use the word Europe needs you. So, as a union, they do have a strong history of a lot of successes, you know, taking these types of initiatives, and at this point it's pretty high-level. We don't know a lot about it, but there are some clues in there. Some may argue that government intervention and cloud services at this point could slow down rather than speed up innovation. What's your response to that? Well, that could go either way. Certainly they see a lot of the potential economically to embracing this and kind of coming out with something that, you know, that they can build on their standard. But, you know, being a different type of economy compared to ours, it's going to be interesting to see. Again, they do have a history of successes in this, but it has the potential to change a lot of what we know as far as cloud services. Why is it that the European Commission is choosing to get involved in cloud services now? Well, clearly they see an opportunity to compete with the global strength of new emerging economies. They also consider it's a very, it has a lot of potential in terms of, you know, the potential for bringing in a lot of business. What they're saying is, if we don't adapt, quite simply, we may not be able to keep those happy lifestyles. And they're referring to, again, their past successes, they really want to adapt. They're saying that the cloud computing is a game changer for their economy and that without action, EU action, they will stay stuck and miss out on billions in economic gains. So they're seeing all this, they're seeing all these changes and seeing that opportunity. And I think that this is kind of a turning point where they're looking to establish something that is going to take hold and hopefully in their eyes sweep the cloud computing game for the EU. What are some areas that we can look out for concerning the EC's cloud proposals? So according to the statement that they put out, the communications technology internet provides half of Europe's productivity growth. They're also looking at, they made note that they have a huge amount of talent there in Europe and they're looking to utilize that. So we're probably going to be looking at something that's European centric and, you know, that really, that introduces the potential for a lot of competition. So we may see some new players come on the scene. Right now it's not so easy to move cloud based data from one provider to another. Is that something that we may be able to expect from them? I think they're going to be looking to implement some type of regulations around that or standards around that. For as much as it is a union, there's a variety of regulations that exist today just in terms of like privacy and, you know, data retention, a few other things like that that differ from country to country even within the European Union. So, you know, you're going to see, you know, some baseline standard. I believe that that's what they're going to try and shoot for. But nonetheless with all those different regulations that are going to be in place in different countries and amongst different industries such as banking and other similar industries, we're probably going to see, you know, an attempt to do that. But we'll see. We'll see what happens. Do you see the big players in cloud possibly being the same that have shown dominance in other areas like Microsoft in the browser area or Google in search? Yeah, definitely Google, Microsoft, you know, the big players are going to try to step in and, you know, shake hands and make deals and things like that. There's no doubt that competition will be heating up. Again, I think that, you know, there's going to be a focus or some type of centralization around European-based providers and how that really plays out really remains to be seen. We know that there's a history of court cases and things like that against Google, against Microsoft, things that go on, you know, overseas and, you know, there's always some litigation going on at some level. So, you know, it may be a while before this shakes out, but, you know, once we see a little more meat to, you know, what it is they're looking to put together, I think we can really start to put some pieces together and say, hey, you know, there will be a new provider and it will come out of Europe and it will be for Europe or whatever the case might be or if it will be one of the traditional dominant players really, you know, coming up and taking hold and taking advantage of that market there. As far as European-based players or new cloud players. Is there anyone that's sort of coming to the forefront right now or anyone that we can see stepping into the light at this point? No, no, not that I think it's still wide open. Again, and when we see some meat around that and, you know, some standards and things like that, I mean, it very well could be that they fall in with one of the various camps of cloud, you know, ubiquity, in other words, the ability to have open standards, which way they go with that, you know, and perhaps then we can start to make some judgments on, well, you know, they might be going towards, you know, Amazon or they might be going towards Rackspace or whatever the case might be, or, you know, Google, you know, very well could be, but I think that once we start to hear some of those things and they start to embrace either a new standard or embrace one of the open standards, we really won't have any indication at that point. Globally, how do you see Europe standing in its cloud position against other forces like the U.S.? I think that I think that there's a big potential for that market. For sure, they put out the figure of 200 billion of stimulus there. And I think that, I think that might be understanding it a little bit. And there's certainly a lot of up and coming business that is based out of Europe. And I think that in terms of cloud adoption, you're going to see companies and so forth embracing the cloud and utilizing that in their everyday business. So I think that there's a huge upside to that. And I think that it may have, you know, a very, very vertical path to adoption. And it may be very quick. Europe talks a lot about the cloud impacting its economic status. Can you tell us what specifically they mean by that? I think that there may be a tendency to think about Europe in terms of cloud adoption where they might be a little bit behind where the rest of the world might be. And I think that urge, that initiative to catch up, I think that that really may be the impetus behind all this is, hey, as I said earlier, clamoring around the European Union and a bit of a cause and everything else, let's make this European. I think that, A, recognizing that, B, setting that standard and bringing that air of safety to industry is going to be a huge driving factor towards really creating a surge of people adopting cloud-based technology. Well, we're definitely eager to see how everything unfolds. Thanks for joining us today, John. OK, thank you. And remember, you can follow the news of the day and get the latest breaking analysis here at Newsdesk on SiliconANGLE.TV.