31 Jan 2012
The new EU data protection rules proposed last week by the European Commission (EC) will make cloud-based services more attractive to European consumers and businesses, according to Vice President of the EC for the Digital Agenda, Neelie Kroes.
Speaking yesterday at the 'Fuelling the European Economy' summit, Kroes explained that the new regulations were designed to dictate that everyone owns their own personal data, and has a right to know where it is stored.
She said that this means that personal data remains under users' control.
"Putting your personal data in the cloud needn't mean you lose control of it, or that you're locked in to one provider. That's good for privacy, good for user control, and good for a competitive cloud market.
"Because I don't want a situation where choosing one cloud service means that you're stuck with that decision."
She added that this also applies to non-personal data, which includes data stored by businesses.
Part of the EC's proposal is to ratify a single set of legislation to govern data protection across the EU. Kroes explained that this will mean that organisations wil only need to deal with one regulator.
"We have proposed a Regulation to replace a Directive: that means a single set of rules for Europe, not 27 different ones. Alongside that, under the new rules you will get a one-stop-shop of enforcement.
"So that, even if an operator is active in several EU countries, it will only have to deal with one data protection authority – the one where its main base is."
She also said that cloud users should be able to know where their data is being stored.
"Cloud users should not have to guess where their provider is. If a company offers goods or services to people in the EU, or is monitoring them, then it shouldn't matter where that company's based – in Madrid, Mumbai or Mountain View."
Kroes announced that the EC is working on a new cloud strategy to be released this summer. Its aim will be to encourage cloud adoption among organisations in EU member states.
"We are working on a European Cloud Strategy for mid-2012. The strategy will set out how to make Europe not just cloud-friendly but cloud-active."
Kroes sounds like she thinks the EU can dictate where googledocs or salesforce servers are located by transforming privacy legislation.
We'll get more stupidity - under the skin of it, her lot are pretty badly informed.
An overhaul of the rules was overdue - hence your readers support. But the implementation - like all EU stuff - will be a disaster of red tape for UK business.
Posted by: John Stephens 31 Jan 2012
Very very few enterprises are going to adopt cloud on a standalone basis - the big job is going to be architecting structures that run across public and private - integrating data from Salesforce CRM say, with Microsoft ERP.
The idea that the buyer has much of an active choice as to where geographically Microsoft and SF's servers are located is breathtakingly niaive - Kroes is peddling BS - and even larger BS if she means public cloud services like googledocs - the servers for which will be located where google puts them.
Posted by: John Stephens 31 Jan 2012
Anyone who has ever read an EU draft directive knows that they are written in gobbledegook lawyers that have made a cottage industry out of interpreting. The result is a plethora of local legal interpretation and enforcement.
Far from leading to any improvement, this will undermine local regimes and mean that cloud providers will choose to locate their servers inside EU borders but with the country that has the most useless enforcement regime- countries where tax avoidance and corruption are a commonplace.
It will not be the UK .
Posted by: Lord Gaga 31 Jan 2012
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