Introducing the Europe Region, Now Available in Public Beta (opens in new tab)

(blog.heroku.com)

133 pointsjbeynon12y ago31 comments

31 comments

From a legal standpoint: Does this now comply with the EU (German?) data privacy laws? I was told the other day, that using Heroku was a No-No, because you are storing your customer data with a non-EU-compliant company outside the EU. With this, the data resides in the EU. Does this (magically) make my troubles go away?

Remarks: I am totally not a lawyer

friism12y ago

From the "Safe Harbor Compliance is Coming Soon" section:

    Heroku is not yet a registered participant in the Safe
    Harbor program. We’ve laid the groundwork for becoming
    Safe Harbor certified and expect to have it soon. The
    Europe region public beta is designed to let you build
    high-performance apps for European users. It does not
    currently address data residency or jurisdiction concerns. 
    You should assume that some portions of your app and its
    data will be in, or pass through, datacenters located in
    the US.

hiddenfeatures12y ago

Oh sh*t. I didn't read the website (only the newsletter). Thanks for posting, though. Should be helpful for others as well!

neilmiddleton12y ago

(I work @heroku)

Europe region beta is not yet Safe Harbor cert. Working on it. Sign up for updates to stay informed heroku.com/europe

mikehale12y ago

Heroku is not (yet) safe harbor compliant, but we have plans to be so.

hiddenfeatures12y ago

How close are you to fulfilling those requirements? I am just asking, because there are quite a few German PaaS providers showing up now. So there seems to be a market. And it is a real problem when you try to do business with healthcare

rmc12y ago

Well, IANAL, but they say they are based on Ireland (in Amazon's EC2 servers), so Irish law (which is a subset of EU law) applies to their servers there.

I'm not sure what they keep meaning by "not safe harbour compliant", since the law applies all the time to all people in Ireland....

friism12y ago

IANAL either, but note that Heroku is an American company and that probably has implications due to the PATRIOT act. Check out what a Microsoft exec had to say about this: "Microsoft cannot provide those guarantees. Neither can any other company" - http://www.zdnet.com/blog/igeneration/microsoft-admits-patri...

brazzy12y ago

> Irish law (which is a subset of EU law)

Shouldn't that be "superset"?

1 more reply

jbeynonOP12y ago

The press releases talk about them not being Safe Harbour yet but it is now much more in progress. Your data may pass through the US still at presently.

nthj12y ago

I may be more excited about Heroku Fork than I am about the EU region. I've copied apps many many times, it's one of those tasks that I always meant to write up into a script and never got around to. Thanks Heroku!

ryandaigle12y ago

Love to get your feedback on fork - ping me at: rd at heroku as you start using the tool.

robotmay12y ago

Aye this sounds great for setting up staging environments, which until now we've had to do manually.

rmc12y ago

Is this based in the EU? Or a non EU European country? EU =/= Europe. The blog post keeps mentioning Europe, but a lot of aliases are EU. This is important to figure out what law is applicable. (The graphic implies it's hosted in Ireland)

neilmiddleton12y ago

This is based in the AWS EU datacenter in Ireland. However, as far as the law is concerned, we are not yet Safe Harbor compliant, but are actively working on it.

undoware12y ago

Going to sacrifice the Karma to say:

I didn't know Europe was out of alpha. They seem to be experiencing integration bugs.

I knew we should have unit-tested Greece.

uggedal12y ago

Just 4.5 years after EC2 was available in Ireland...: http://aws.amazon.com/releasenotes/DevPay/1924

impostervt12y ago

Would love the ability to have one instance in US, another in EU, and have heroku auto-route to the best one...

ryandaigle12y ago

How would you handle db/data sync between the apps?

impostervt12y ago

..I would let you (heroku) do that for me, magically? ;)

1 more reply

pinaceae12y ago

Now, could SFDC please do the same - not having a datacenter in EU is so bad. Performance is measurably worse.

And Safe Harbor is nice, but having a DC in EU would make the discussions around it even easier.

rdl12y ago

Wow, this is awesome for both DR reasons and performance reasons. Congratulations Heroku! (Hopefully a second US Region and an Asia Region will follow...)

robotmay12y ago

Hurrah! I'll be toying around with this first thing in the morning. Thanks for all the hard work, Heroku guys.

evolve2k12y ago

I'm hopeful that more regions are in the works. Might we see an Oceania region any time soon?

DoubleCluster12y ago

Sorry, already running on EC2 by now...

michaelrkn12y ago

woot! here's to hoping we get support for regional redundancy in the US soon.

ironchief12y ago

Agreed, Heroku is fantastic but I'm paranoid about keeping all my servers in one region.

#CTOproblems

gtaylor12y ago

if this is a big enough concern, it may be best to just drop down a level of abstraction and run directly on AWS.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

31 comments

hiddenfeatures12y ago

Remarks: I am totally not a lawyer

friism12y ago

From the "Safe Harbor Compliance is Coming Soon" section:

    Heroku is not yet a registered participant in the Safe
    Harbor program. We’ve laid the groundwork for becoming
    Safe Harbor certified and expect to have it soon. The
    Europe region public beta is designed to let you build
    high-performance apps for European users. It does not
    currently address data residency or jurisdiction concerns. 
    You should assume that some portions of your app and its
    data will be in, or pass through, datacenters located in
    the US.

hiddenfeatures12y ago

Oh sh*t. I didn't read the website (only the newsletter). Thanks for posting, though. Should be helpful for others as well!

neilmiddleton12y ago

(I work @heroku)

Europe region beta is not yet Safe Harbor cert. Working on it. Sign up for updates to stay informed heroku.com/europe

mikehale12y ago

Heroku is not (yet) safe harbor compliant, but we have plans to be so.

hiddenfeatures12y ago

rmc12y ago

Well, IANAL, but they say they are based on Ireland (in Amazon's EC2 servers), so Irish law (which is a subset of EU law) applies to their servers there.

I'm not sure what they keep meaning by "not safe harbour compliant", since the law applies all the time to all people in Ireland....

friism12y ago

brazzy12y ago

> Irish law (which is a subset of EU law)

Shouldn't that be "superset"?

1 more reply

jbeynonOP12y ago

The press releases talk about them not being Safe Harbour yet but it is now much more in progress. Your data may pass through the US still at presently.

nthj12y ago

ryandaigle12y ago

Love to get your feedback on fork - ping me at: rd at heroku as you start using the tool.

robotmay12y ago

Aye this sounds great for setting up staging environments, which until now we've had to do manually.

rmc12y ago

neilmiddleton12y ago

This is based in the AWS EU datacenter in Ireland. However, as far as the law is concerned, we are not yet Safe Harbor compliant, but are actively working on it.

undoware12y ago

Going to sacrifice the Karma to say:

I didn't know Europe was out of alpha. They seem to be experiencing integration bugs.

I knew we should have unit-tested Greece.

uggedal12y ago

Just 4.5 years after EC2 was available in Ireland...: http://aws.amazon.com/releasenotes/DevPay/1924

impostervt12y ago

Would love the ability to have one instance in US, another in EU, and have heroku auto-route to the best one...

ryandaigle12y ago

How would you handle db/data sync between the apps?

impostervt12y ago

..I would let you (heroku) do that for me, magically? ;)

1 more reply

pinaceae12y ago

Now, could SFDC please do the same - not having a datacenter in EU is so bad. Performance is measurably worse.

And Safe Harbor is nice, but having a DC in EU would make the discussions around it even easier.

rdl12y ago

Wow, this is awesome for both DR reasons and performance reasons. Congratulations Heroku! (Hopefully a second US Region and an Asia Region will follow...)

robotmay12y ago

Hurrah! I'll be toying around with this first thing in the morning. Thanks for all the hard work, Heroku guys.

evolve2k12y ago

I'm hopeful that more regions are in the works. Might we see an Oceania region any time soon?

DoubleCluster12y ago

Sorry, already running on EC2 by now...

michaelrkn12y ago

woot! here's to hoping we get support for regional redundancy in the US soon.

ironchief12y ago

Agreed, Heroku is fantastic but I'm paranoid about keeping all my servers in one region.

#CTOproblems

gtaylor12y ago

if this is a big enough concern, it may be best to just drop down a level of abstraction and run directly on AWS.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse