Over the last decade, the use of cloud services has become more commonplace, so much so that nearly all of us probably use at least one cloud service at work. That said, it is worth pointing out that there is a real dearth of European cloud services on offer: more than two-thirds of the digital platforms on the market were developed in the United States, roughly 20% in Asia, and only approximately 3% in Europe.
You can’t help but wonder why there are no more cloud services being developed in Europe. We should consider the issue both at an organizational level and from a social perspective. Maybe we are yet to realize the significance of the origin of the cloud service.
The key difference between the cloud services developed in Asia or the US and those developed in Europe is clear. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) of the EU imposes clear requirements on the processing of personal data. Service providers operating elsewhere are not necessarily obliged to comply with similar regulations.
Only recently have we woken up to the realization that European cloud services are needed in addition to Asian and American ones. The issue has been widely discussed in Germany for some time now and, in the last few years, also increasingly in Sweden. For example, the City of Stockholm made the decision to not adopt the Office 365 cloud service, quoting growing privacy concerns.
From a social perspective, the importance of European platforms should also be considered from the viewpoint of business continuity planning. Global challenges like the energy crisis and various cyber threats raise questions. What are we going to do if the connections to cloud services produced outside of Europe are cut? What will happen to the data we can’t access?
The core promise of cloud services is based on the idea that the service is produced by another party and that the responsibility is left to someone else, leaving the customer with more time to focus on their core business. In and of itself, this is an amazing value proposition. What’s often been thrown out with the bathwater, though, is the knowledge of how and where the customer’s data is being processed. This is why it is so important to offer organizations the opportunity to increase their understanding of the way data is processed and the ways in which the selection of service providers can influence it. The age-old saying still applies when delegating responsibilities to others: if it seems too good to be true, it likely is.
In addition to the strong data protection enabled by the EU, we care about our customers seamlessly getting what they need. Our main data centers in Finland and Germany are both located and operated in those countries, with new data center locations to be established based on customer demand. As the architecture, automation, and monitoring of our cloud service are not dependent on the features of the data center, we are also able to run our cloud service from the customer’s own data center. We offer the same technical and operational service regardless of the customer’s choice of data residency. We call this the cloud on your own terms philosophy.
To learn more about cloud on your own terms and get your questions answered, register to our upcoming webinar.
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