Is it really down? I'm not so sure. From what I've observed, most saavy tech people where already aware of the security issues. I'm sure there were some (perhaps not quite as saavy?) tech people who were shocked by the recent revelations. Most Americans are not tech people, and if they have heard of the NSA scandals, are not shocked, nor terribly worried.

They are used to, and for the most part, willing to trust their tech people to do what is right.

Is Facebook usage down? Gmail? LinkedIn? Twitter? I doubt any of those SaaS services are hurting as a result of the NSA scandal, and those are some of the ones that were specifically mentioned as rich data sources for the g-men.

Most of the companies I've worked in over the past 15 years or so are driven Number One by tight deadlines. Anything that makes those deadlines easier to hit, is a welcomed part of the project. Member privacy and data security have not been priorities. Sure, they are important if you can do it, but not as important as hitting that deadline.

We need rapid deployment and flexible configurations for everything. The fast pace just keeps getting faster.

We've seen a rise in VM's, pre-staged servers, appliances, then AWS provisioning, and other infrastructure technology because rapid deployment and flexible configurations are paramount.

SaaS is even better, you don't have to mess with infrastructure at all.

Faster, and faster if you can.