Business-as-a-Service built from multiple cloud service providers is the next major value opportunity for the Enterprise. Cloud-neutral colocation providers should be bringing service providers and system integrators together to encourage the next generation of solutions.

This blogpost is writtern by Eric Boonstra, MB of EvoSwitch

As 451 put it in a recent analycis, the first three ‘as a Service’ pillars of IaaS, PaaS and SaaS all to some extent “mirror…existing technology towers that the market is used to outsourcing.”  But BaaS – or BPaaS as it is sometimes called – tests the vision, and the nerve, of managers and consultants.

Sharing infrastructure, networks or applications is one thing, but is the outsourcing of core processes a bridge – or rather a pillar – too far? Should you allow partners to manage customer-facing processes? And if you are offering BaaS, how do you overcome these concerns?

For those businesses that are already well down the IT as a Service road, BaaS is a natural next step.  BaaS builds on the collaborative model of working with external service providers to leverage the cloud technology stack provided through solutions like EvoSwitch OpenCloud.

The Most Valuable Service of All

Value is the key driver – do the benefits outweigh the risks involved? In this respect BaaS should, by its nature, far outperform the other pillars. Rather than tackling a lower value ‘transferable’ service which can be seen as peripheral to the core business, BaaS delivers high value business outcomes. With BaaS you can quickly accomplish a goal using business services orchestrated, managed, monitored, run and hosted in the cloud. Costs and results are both easy to measure, bringing businesses closer to achieving the original transformational promise of cloud technology.

Putting the BaaS Offering Together

From the solution integrator’s perspective, these benefits definitely make BaaS a worthwhile challenge, particularly when using a third party cloud-neutral provider like EvoSwitch.  TCO becomes easy to track, there is no need for Capex on facilities, and there is instant, secure, low latency access to a vibrant ecosystem of NSPs and CSPs, including the specialist service providers needed to tailor service levels for specific clients.

Make Space in your Diary

We want to be where the new BaaS solutions emerge: as an ideal incubation and launch location for the next generation of BaaS solutions, it falls to cloud-neutral colocation providers like EvoSwitch to bring the key actors together. On Thursday 24 March in Haarlem, the Netherlands, we’re organizing a half-day event around ‘the changing role of traditional outsourcing (BPO) in a multi-cloud world’. If you are interested in attending this Dutch-language event (Event has been held)

Further Reading

• Pim Bilderbeek of TheMETISfiles on BaaS challenges and opportunities (Pim spoke at our event). Read article here.

Data Protection is set to be one of this year’s main headaches. This month has seen announcements about both the new GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) in the EU and Privacy Shield agreement with the US, so progress is being made.   However for CTOs/CIOs on both sides of the Atlantic this means more new processes and potential shifts in strategy in an unsettled environment where there are no guarantees that today’s political agreements will turn into hard and fast law.

New Regulation, New Responsibilities

This Blogpost was written by Eric Boonstra MD of EvoSwitch.

Following six years of discussion and debate a draft of the new EU General Data Protection Regulation has been released.  The new Regulation, set to become law in 2018, will replace the Data Protection Directive (DPD), but there are still many questions around implementation and interpretation.  Responsibility for data protection has been extended from data controllers to data processors and now includes businesses with no physical infrastructure in the EU that nevertheless do business here. There are strict new regulations on, among other things

• data collection/consent, classification, disclosure and documentation
• individual data protection; at collection, during migration (‘right to data portability’, and thereafter (time limits to holding data and ‘right to be forgotten’)
• notification regarding data loss or security incidents (‘right to know when you are hacked’)

With fines for breaches of up to 4% of global annual turnover (or €20 million, whichever is higher), you don’t want to run the risk of non-compliance when the regulation launches.

EU-US Privacy Shield: Political Progress

Companies are also watching with some anxiety as the tug of war between US and EU data protection standards continues.  This month saw the provisional announcement of the new EU-US Privacy Shield agreement. The new agreement promises to enforce more ‘robust obligations’ on firms with access to personal data, with safeguards and transparency on US government access and a new ombudsman to handle user complaints. However, as with the defunct Safe Harbor agreement which it replaces, the new agreement could be overturned in the EU by both the CJEU (The European Court of Justice), or by individual national Data Protection Authorities.

Infrastructure Impacts: Securing your Clouds

From an infrastructure perspective, providers like EvoSwitch can offer a mix of solutions to support our customers’ data protection needs as they change.  With constantly expanding colocation space in both the EU and the US that meets the most exacting international security standards, secure data storage in the appropriate geography is not an issue.  For companies looking for a hybrid solution, the new focus in the regulation on the data ‘processor’ rather than data ‘controller’ is good news, as it shifts some responsibility for data handling and documentation to Cloud Service Providers (CSPs), and many CSPs are already well positioned to address the regulations through a mix of best practice and certifications.

Choose your Clouds Wisely

Choice is key here to ensure your CSPs are not only compliant but sufficiently agile to adapt to a regulatory environment that is still evolving.  This is something which, with some 25 CSPs including all the major public cloud providers, the EvoSwitch OpenCloud delivers.  The broad ecosystem we offer will avoid vendor lock-in, giving you strategic flexibility well beyond the start date for the GDPR, and enables you to leverage Public Cloud for less latency-sensitive data or applications, while keeping other data in a Private Cloud, for compliancy or latency purposes.

For more information and to request access, please visit https://opencloud.evoswitch.com/login/

Further Reading

• European Commission press release on EU-US Privacy Shield. Read article here.
• Two-page Article from Forbes on Privacy Shield Timeframe & Conditions by Lisa Brownlee. Read article here.