Can the EU afford to drive out American cloud services?

Some EU countries want to stifle foreign cloud computing services. These countries’ concerns are not irrational. But disadvantaging America’s cloud giants will do Europe more harm than good.

 
The European Commission has grand ambitions for the digital transformation of European businesses. To achieve this, the Commission wants 75 per cent of European businesses to adopt cloud computing services or similar technologies by 2030. The target is inexplicably specific, but the sentiment makes sense. Cloud services allow businesses to access computing resources like data storage remotely and on demand, using shared infrastructure – which is often more efficient, more secure and more easily scalable as businesses grow.

The only wrinkle: American tech firms like Amazon, Microsoft and Google currently dominate the European cloud computing market. Chinese firms like Alibaba and Huawei are keen to make headway. Despite some member-states’ support for European champions in the sector, European cloud companies remain minnows.

Beyond some EU leaders’ vague concern that Europe lacks ‘digital sovereignty’ because of its dearth of large technology companies, cloud computing poses specific worries. Cloud computing companies host vast amounts of Europeans’ personal information and business secrets. If foreign governments can force cloud companies on their territory to give them access to data, that will violate EU legislation like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), impinge on Europeans’ rights, and allow industrial espionage (a concern that applies even to the EU’s allies). Some European member-states therefore want to constrain foreign cloud computing firms’ ability to win sensitive contracts in Europe. Their concern is not entirely ungrounded, nor is it uniquely European. But the EU needs a dose of hard-nosed pragmatism. If Europeans are too rigid, they risk harming their own security, growth and tech ambitions.

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Πηγή: cer.eu