Speaking at the Datacloud Europe Event in Monaco on the 3rd June, Pearse O'Donoghue, the European Commission's head of software, services and cloud computing, said the use of off-premise technologies can bring many numerous economic and productivity benefits to startups and enterprises.
However, Pearse reflected on current challenges in the flow of data across European borders, noting firstly that we live in an age in which data flow is both essential and manifold.
Within this commercial need, there are challenges with the variation of data protection legislation throughout the European community which impact on the simplicity which businesses are striving for both in reducing cost and decreasing time to market.
For the European Commission, anything which can be done to simplify and aid this process is imperative, and one particular initiative would be exploring how the unification of data protection legislation could support this goal.
This is part of the Digital Single Market push, designed to create a single marketplace for digital services in the European Union.
"We need to ensure providers and users have access to the full European market, and the services are in competition with each other, which leads to greater innovation and lower cost", said Donoghue.
variations in consumer protection laws as well as data sovereignty issues can pose challenges to firms selling services to other member states. Included in this is shipping costs and website blocking.
Finally, data protection legislation can be restrictive in allowing companies to contract for cloud services from certain organisations, in particular, based on their location. Anything which can be done to simplify this process will be welcomed, and will be lobbied for by the European Commission.
