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When it comes to cars or machines, "made in Germany" is seen worldwide as a sign of quality, but some firms are now extending it to "cloud computing", the buzzword at this year's CeBIT tech fair.

It may seem paradoxical to impose borders on this multi-billion-dollar industry, which allows users to store data remotely rather than on individual machines, but this is exactly the aim of Deutsche Telekom.

The head of the German communications giant, Rene Obermann, told visitors to the CeBIT this year that "the 'German Cloud' could present a competitive advantage for us."

Why? In a word, security.

Having lived through first a Nazi dictatorship, then a Communist one, Germans are especially sensitive when it comes to data protection and Deutsche Telekom hopes to leverage this to its advantage.

"In Germany, the data protection laws are very strict. But several operators do not come from Germany and do not adhere to these standards," said Obermann.

He is aiming at the 3.6 million prosperous German small and medium sized firms who have not yet taken the leap to storing their data using cloud computing. Only 12 percent have done so.

"It's an enormous potential," said Obermann, vaunting the advantage of his firm's 30 giant servers or "datacenters" across Germany.

However, Sergei Schlotthauer, head of the German IT security lobby Egosecure, accused Deutsche Telekom of "playing on people's fears."

"For me it makes no difference. Our clients are well aware that with the Internet it is difficult to localise something," he said.

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Cloud computing 'made in Germany' stirs debate at CeBIT