- It is a single, recognisable generic technology
- Initially has much scope for improvement but comes to be widely used across the economy
- Has many different uses
- Creates many spillover effects
However, not all the nations will be able to develop their own cloud-computing industry. There is a need of an strong and big national basis to boost the industry to the transnational level, because, due to its nature, it is not possible to compete in the international cloud market without this strong national basis. As usual, in the fragmented Europe the only solution is tackling the development of the cloud industry from an European perspective.
Not tackling the development of the cloud.computing industry at the European level has clear economic implications. According with a recent study, only 6% percent of the cloud providers are European, while the USA counts with an 88% share of the market. This fact not only has an impact in terms of value added to the GNP, the same study indicates that 63% of the revenues are generated by USA suppliers and 23% by EU suppliers, it also has an impact in the development of colateral markets (e.g. cloud insurances), employment and the taxes collected by the governments.
The report gives in the end some recommendations about how to increase the degree of protection for EU citizen in the usage of cloud services. Perhaps, the most important one is the recommendation to renegotiate the agreements for transfer personal data between USA and EU. The general idea is that if we want that the US companies to fulfill our Data Protection legal framework we need to introduce heavy sanctions in case they do not comply with it. The reason is obvious, cloud computing introduce in the IT providers the need to fulfill with different legal frameworks and now the legal framework in the USA is more strict than the one we have in the EU (e.g. if a US provider does not comply with intelligence surveillance regulation faces prison). The document even critizises the Safe Harbour agreement as a false solution with insufficient safeguards.
Certainly cloud computing looks as a powerful and needed solution for many applications, for instance it is unthinkable to thing in big data applications without cloud storage capabilities. Same could be said about the processing needs for smart cities. But without the trust there will not be a take-up of cloud services, and the document of the EP has had the courage to denounce this need.
Original: http://somos-digitales.blogspot.com/2013/12/the-european-parliament-cloud-king-is.html
por: Emilio García García
Publicado: December 19, 2013, 6:46 am