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Options offered by the cloud

Written by Gaspar Palmer on November 26, 2021

When we refer to 'The cloud,' we use the polite term to speak of outsourcing web services such as communications, email, and data storage, usually in the hands of giants like Amazon, Google, and Microsoft, among others. It is the case that we even see that public administrations bid to leave the management of their data, emails, etc., in the hands of these same companies - usually, the lack of means, both material and human, to carry out direct management.

Putting the data in the hands of another, outsourcing its management, can be very comfortable. But the main problem and a concern common to all users of this type of service are, above all, "loss of control" over the data.

Putting data on machines at the expense of another provider may be more efficient, but you will have less control over access and management of it. It is necessary to mention that some of these large suppliers in their contracts (through convoluted clauses that we sometimes ignore) have our authorization so that our data is the product with which it will be traded.

Therefore, today organizations have to make critical decisions about the storage and maintenance of our data, from different points of view:

• Operational and Functional Aspect; guaranteeing the correct performance of our organization.
• Creation and preservation of competitive advantages: through the knowledge acquired and especially that developed from these data
• Compliance with the regulatory and legislative environment.

Regarding the legal framework, it is necessary to take into account:

• The European RGPD imperatively demands that sensitive data related to its citizens cannot be hosted on external servers outside the community territory.
• The US Cloud Act allows US authorities (from local police to federal agencies) to ask US technology companies for data on users and companies from other countries hosted in data centers outside their territory. Which de facto implies access to the data housed in the data centers of American companies on European soil.

Although the corresponding contracts are signed that oblige, in this case, that the data be on servers in the European Economic Area; it is difficult to know if that is going to be the case for sure, even though the systems can be audited.

Keep in mind that cloud service providers in the United States operate in the European Union. However, they have their data centers on European territory and comply with European laws, subject to the Cloud Act's dictates. So they could be having to disclose data of European users and companies if requested by the North American authorities. For this reason, Germany alerted the other members of the European Union to the danger of leaving the management of sensitive (even critical) information in the hands of US companies

The best way for European citizens and companies to protect their privacy is to choose to host their data in cloud services of providers located in the Community territory and are of European companies.

OpenKM's Cloud service helps us solve all the legislative mess and provides ease of access, management, and security-based in the EU, at an affordable cost and with total privacy.

The OpenKM Cloud service makes the necessary commitments to provide data management without the possibility of unexpected surprises. This commitment is embodied in the clauses of the service contract, which clearly state that our documents will be kept secure (exclusively at our expense and under our management). And without finding in the contractual terms, nothing can be interpreted to operate, control, examine, or any synonym that affects our data and operations.

This Cloud environment can also be managed in different ways, according to our needs:

• Directly by the OpenKM team: obtaining a pure Cloud, with access as a service that includes the administration and maintenance of the servers and the correct execution of the backup copies. This service is the most suitable for those organizations that do not demand many users or manage large repository volumes. With a cost of € 75 per month.
• Also by the OpenKM team, but in this case, the services of an IT department external to our organization are provided. Hosting services are differentiated from those associated with the support of the OpenKM platform (the former are monthly and the latter annually). This proposal is suitable for business environments with a high number of users or large repository sizes to manage. Also ideal for high availability environments.
• Finally, an environment hosted in the same datacenter but managed by our own IT department (OpenKM) will manage the organization's policies regarding the administration and maintenance of the server and the backup procedures. In this case, the OpenKM technical team will only provide the technical support associated with the document management platform. This proposal would suit any business environment with its own IT team and directly manage its private cloud. With the option of having high availability environments if required.