Tag: European values

Article

Europäische Cloud-Anbieter profitieren von Datenschutzbedenken (European cloud offerings profit from data protection) | Netzwoche.ch (German language / Deutsche Sprache)

My Comments

I am following the scene as far as European online services and cloud computing for both business and consumer use is going. This is based on how I see that Europe could compete with the US establishment when it comes to offering any online service and ensure it respects European values.

I have just read a Swiss article which talked about the US and Chinese hyperscale cloud platforms dominating the European cloud-computing scene. But this article is stating that European cloud-computing / online-service providers are catching up with these behemoths. Here these companies are using data protection as a selling point due to data-protection and user-privacy concerns by European businesses and government authorities.

An example I saw of this is Germany and France working towards creating public-cloud computing services with the goal of being able to compete against the public-cloud services offered by the USA and Asia.

A recent survey completed by the French IT consultant Capgemini highlighted that the German-speaking part of Europe (Germany, Australia and Switzerland) were buying minimal European IT services. But the same Capgemini survey were saying that 45 of the respondents wanted to move to European providers in the future thanks to data protection and data sovereignty issues.

Data security is being given increasing importance due to recent cyber attacks and the increased digitalisation of production processes. But the Europeans have very strong data protection and end-user privacy mandates at national and EU level thanks to a strong respect for privacy and confidentiality within modern Europe.

COVID-19 had placed a lot of European IT projects on ice but there has been a constant push to assure business continuity even under the various public-health restrictions mandated by this plague. This includes the support for distributed working whether that be home-office working or remote working.

But how is this relevant to European households, small businesses and community organisations? I do see this as being relevant due to the use of various online and cloud IT services as part of our personal life thanks to the like of search engines, email / messaging, the Social Web, online entertainment, and voice driven assistants. As well, small businesses and community organisations show interest in online and cloud-based computing as a means of benefiting from what may be seen as “big-time” IT without needing much in the way of capital expenditure.

It will be a slow and steady effort for Europe to have online and cloud computing on a par with the US and Asian establishment but this will be about services that respect European privacy, security and data-sovereignty values.

Previous Coverage on HomeNetworking01.info

Europeans could compete with Silicon Valley when offering online services

How about encouraging computer and video games development in Europe, Oceania and other areas

My Comments

Regularly I keep an eye out for information regarding efforts within Europe to increase their prowess when it comes to business and personal IT services. This is more so as Europe is having to face competition from the USA’s Silicon Valley and from China in these fields.

But what do Europeans stand for?

Airbus have proven that they are a valid European competitor to Boeing in the aerospace field

What Europeans hold dear to their heart when it comes to personal, business and public life are their values. These core values encompass freedom, privacy and diversity and have been build upon experience with their history, especially since the Great Depression.

They had had to deal with the Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin dictatorships especially with Hitler’s Nazis taking over parts of European nations like France and Austria; along with the Cold War era with Eastern Europe under communist dictatorships loyal to the Soviet Union. All these affected countries were run as police states with national security forces conduction mass surveillance of the populace at the behest of the dictators.

The EU’s European Parliament summed this up succinctly on their page with Europeans placing value on human dignity, human rights, freedom, democracy, equality and the rule of law. It is underscored in a pluralistic approach with respect for minority groups.

I also see this in the context of business through a desire to have access to a properly-functioning competitive market driven by publicly-available standards and specifications. It includes a strong deprecation of bribery, corruption and fraud within European business culture, whether this involves the public sector or not. This is compared to an “at-any-cost” approach valued by the USA and China when it comes to doing business.

As well, the European definition of a competitive market is the availability of goods or services for best value for money. This includes people who are on a very limited budget gaining access to these services in a useable manner that underscores the pluralistic European attitude.

How is this relevant to business and consumer IT?

Nowadays, business and consumer IT is more “service-focused” through the use of online services whether totally free, complementary with the purchase of a device, paid for through advertising or paid for through regular subscription payments. Increasingly these services are being driven by the mass collection of data about the service’s customers or end-users with people describing the data as being the “new oil”.

Examples of this include Web search engines, content hosting providers like YouTube or SoundCloud, subscription content providers, online and mobile gaming services, and voice-driven assistants. It also includes business IT services like cloud-computing services and general hosting providers that facilitate these services.

Europeans see this very differently due to their heritage. Here, they want control over their data along with the ability to participate in a competitive market that works to proper social expectations. This is compared to business models operated by the USA and China that disrespect the “Old World’s” approach to personal and business values.

The European Union have defended these goals but primarily with the “stick” approach. It is typically through passing regulations like the GDPR data-protection regulations or taking legal action against US-based dominant players within this space.

But what needs to happen and what is happening?

What I often want to see happen is European companies build up credible alternatives to what businesses in China and the USA are offering. Here, the various hardware, software and services that Europe has to offer respects the European personal and business culture and values. They also need to offer this same technology to individuals, organisations and jurisdictions who believe in the European values of stable government that respects human rights including citizen privacy and the rule of law.

What is being done within Europe?

Spotify – one of Europe’s success stories

There are some European success stories like Spotify, the “go-to” online subscription service that is based in Sweden as well as a viable French competitor in the form of Deezer, along with SoundCloud which is an audio-streaming service based in Germany.

Candy Crush Saga – a European example of what can be done in the mobile game space

A few of the popular mobile “guilty-pleasure” games like Candy Crush Saga and Angry Birds were developed in Europe. Let’s not forget Ubisoft who are a significant French video games publisher who have set up studios around the world and are one of the most significant household names in video games. Think of game franchiese like Assassin’s Creed  or Far Cry which are some of the big-time games that this developer had put out.

Then Qwant appeared as a European-based search engine that creates its own index and stores it within Europe. This is compared to some other European-based search engines which are really “metasearch engines” that concatenate data from multiple search engines including Google and Bing.

There have been a few Web-based email platforms like ProtonMail surfacing out of Switzerland that focus on security and privacy for the end-user. This is thanks to Switzerland’s strong respect for business and citizen privacy especially in the financial world.

The Freebox Delta is an example of a European product running a European voice assistant

There are some European voice assistants surfacing with BMW developing the Intelligent Personal Assistant for in-vehicle use while the highly-competitive telecommunications market in France yielded some voice assistants of French origin thanks to Orange and Free. Spain came in on the act with Movistar offering their own voice assistant. I see growth in this aspect of European IT thanks to the Amazon Voice Interopability Initiative which allows a single hardware device like a smart speaker to allow access to multiple voice-assistant

The AVM FRITZ!Box 7530 is a German example of home network hardware with European heritage

Technicolor, AVM and a few other European companies are creating home network hardware typically in the form of carrier-supplied home-network routers. It is although AVM are offering their Fritz lineup of of home-network hardware through the retail channel with one of these devices being the first home-network router to automatically update itself with the latest patches. In the case of Free.fr, their Freebox products are even heading to the same kind of user interface expected out of a recent Synology or QNAP NAS thanks to the continual effort to add more capabilities in these devices.

But Europe are putting the pedal to the metal when it comes to cloud computing, especially with the goal to assure European sovereignty over data handled this way. Qarnot, a French company, have engaged in the idea of computers that are part of a distributed-computing setup yielding their waste heat from data processing for keeping you warm or allowing you to have a warm shower at home. Now Germany is heading down the direction of a European-based public cloud for European data sovereignty.

There has been significant research conducted by various European institutions that have impacted our online lives. One example is Frauhofer Institute in Germany have contributed to the development of file-based digital audio in both the MP3 and AAC formats. Another group of examples represent efforts by various European public-service broadcasters to effectively bring about “smart radio” with “flagging” of traffic announcements, smart automatic station following, selection of broadcasters by genre or area and display of broadcast-content metadata through the ARI and RDS standards for FM radio and the evolution of DAB+ digital radio.

But what needs to happen and may will be happening is to establish and maintain Europe as a significantly-strong third force for consumer and business IT. As well, Europe needs to expose their technology and services towards people and organisations in other countries rather than focusing it towards the European, Middle Eastern and Northern African territories.

European technology companies would need to offer the potential worldwide customer base something that differentiates themselves from what American and Chinese vendors are offering. Here, they need to focus their products and services towards those customers who place importance on what European personal and business values are about.

What needs to be done at the national and EU level

Some countries like France and Germany implement campaigns that underscore products that are made within these countries. Here, they could take these “made in” campaigns further by promoting services that are built up in those countries and have most of their customers’ data within those countries. Similarly the European Union’s organs of power in Brussels could then create logos for use by IT hardware and software companies that are chartered in Europe and uphold European values.

At the moment Switzerland have taken a proactive step towards cultivating local software-development talent by running a “Best of Swiss Apps” contest. Here, it recognises Swiss app developers who have turned out excellent software for regular or mobile computing platforms. At the moment, this seems to focus on apps which primarily have Switzerland-specific appeal, typically front-ends to services offered by the Swiss public service or companies serving Swiss users.

Conclusion

One goal for Europe to achieve is a particular hardware, software or IT-services platform that can do what Airbus and Arianespace have done with aerospace. This is to raise some extraordinary products that place themselves on the world stage as a viable alternative to what the USA and China offer. As well, it puts the establishment on notice that they have to raise the bar for their products and services.

Article

Europe to have one or more public cloud services that respect European sovereignty and values

France, Germany want more homegrown clouds to pick from | ITNews (Premium)

My Comments

Germany is instigating a European-wide project to create a public cloud-computing service.  As well, France is registering intent in this same idea but of creating another of these services.

Both countries’ intention is to rival what USA and Asia are offering regarding public-cloud data-processing solutions. But, as I have said before, it is about having public data infrastructure that is sovereign to European laws and values. This also includes the management and dissemination of such data in a broad and secure manner.

… which could also facilitate European software and data services like what is offered through the Freebox Delta

The issue of data sovereignty has become of concern in Europe due to the USA and China pushing legislation to enable their governments to gain access to data held by data service providers that are based in those countries. This is even if the data is held on behalf of a third-party company or hosted on servers that are installed in other countries. The situation has been underscored by a variety of geopolitical tensions involving especially those countries such as the recent USA-China trade spat.

It is also driven by some European countries being dissatisfied with Silicon Valley’s dominance in the world of “as-a-service” computing. This is more so with France where there are goals to detach from and tax “GAFA” (Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon) due to their inordinate influence in consumer and business computing worlds.

or BMW’s voice-driven assistant for in-car infotainment

Let’s not forget that Qarnot in France has designed computers that put their waste heat to use for heating rooms or creating hot water in buildings. This will appeal to a widely-distributed data-processing setup that could be part of public cloud-computing efforts.

Questions that will crop up with the Brexit agenda when Europe establishes this public cloud service will include British data sovereignty if data is held on the European public cloud or whether Britain will have any access or input into this public cloud.

… just like this Airbus A380 superjumbo jet shows European prowess in aerospace

Personally I could see this as facilitating the wider creation of online services by European companies especially with the view to respecting European personal and business values. It could encompass ideas like voice-driven assistant services, search engines, mapping and similar services for consumers or to encourage European IT development.

Could this effort that Germany and France put forward be the Airbus or Arianespace of public-cloud data services?

Articles

Europe takes steps towards its own single sign-on services

European netID Foundation Launches; Turner Establishes Unified Ad Sales Unit T1 | ExchangeWire

netID provides a single portal where European consumers will be able to manage their data privacy | Videonet

RTL Group, ProSieben.Sat1 form European netID Foundation | TVB Europe

From the horse’s mouth

European NetID Foundation (German language / Deutsche Sprache)

Homepage (Startseite)

netid.de

My Comments

Social sign-on and single-sign-on concept diagram – relationship between the social network and online service

A situation that I am regularly watching is whether European companies are running consumer-facing online service that answer what the Silicon Valley establishment can provide yet maintain the European values of privacy and data-handling transparency. This is rather than the European Commission always tackling the Silicon Valley

It’s all kicking off within Germany thanks to RTL and ProSiebenSat1

titans with the big stick when they get out of control.

Here, the European values about democracy, user privacy and data-handling transparency have been moulded and established due to Continental Europe passing through some of the darkest periods in history. Through these eras, a significant number of European nations were run as police states with their national-security services were conduction mass surveillance at the behest of the nations’ dictators.

Infact the German-speaking countries of Europe have become strong defenders of this ideal by enacting strong data-privacy laws. It was also underscored with Germany showing strong concern regarding their Chancellor Angela Merkel being spied on by the NSA which led to European government having their information and communications technology business run by local businesses.

Initially, there have been some European companies operating in the online file-storage, Web-search and online-audio spaces like with CloudMe, Qwant, Spotify and SoundCloud. Also France is taking steps towards a YouTube competitor in the form of a peer-to-peer video-streaming service known as PeerTube. As well, there have been a few privacy-centric Webmail providers hosted within Europe like Protonmail. Lately the BMW Group worked on its own voice-driven personal assistant platform for its vehicles and I had valued this as a possible base for a European-base voice-driven assistant platform answering Alexa and co.

But the latest service class to have a European answer is single-sign-on for online services. This has been facilitated in a consumer-facing manner as a “social-sign-on” facilitated by social networks, mainly Facebook and Google. Such systems also implemented a simplified provisioning process with the data that you used to establish your Facebook or Google presence being used to create your account as you come onboard to a new online service.

The main European competitor has come in the form of NetID, created by the European NetID Foundation. This startup has been established by the RTL Group, ProSiebenSat1, and United Internet but is partnering with some other German brands like the Suddeutsche Zeitung and Spiegel newspapers along with the Scout24 online classifieds Websites.

Another is Verimi which is established by Allianz, Deutsche Bank and Lufthansa. This is based on the WebID video legitimisation service to facilitate verification of customers when they establish bank accounts or credit cards. This company is wanting to underscore the quality ethos behind the “Made In Germany” brand.

They offer a single-sign-on experience and a “hardened identity” service to facilitate online transactions. But the end-users have greater control over their own data and this is being driven by the GDPR and other European data-privacy regulations. Let’s not forget that the data is kept on servers that are within Europe.

The European NetID Foundation do expect to work beyond Germany with the desire to cut in to France, Belgium, Netherlands and Austria at the start. This could be facilitated very easily by the RTL Group who have private commercial TV or other media presence in multiple European countries or ProSiebenSat1 who effectively have private commercial TV presence across German-speaking Europe.

There is the one “data point” for each individual customer to make their data-privacy wishes clear. It is accessible from multiple Websites like those run by the different media providers. But each customer has the ability to have granular opt-in / opt-out control over their data with, for example, the ability to let a company they trust run targeted advertising for them but not allow another company they don’t trust to run that same service. The other key factor behind the European NetID Foundation is that it is an open-platform approach with an open-source codebase.

There is also the concept of customer data being managed by a third-party agent but effectively under the control of these end-users. It is also underscored by an open approach that supports the European transparency value and the data cannot be used by a company until the user grants them consent to that data.

At the moment, the European NetID Foundation is at is early days but it will be needing to approach other sign-on situations including support for devices with limited user interfaces. Here, this would be either be about setting up an account with or signing in to an online video service from a TV using its remote control for example.

Personally, I would like to see these companies offer their alternative single-sign-on services beyond Europe, especially to organisations who support and honour European business values.  But I see it as another step towards Europe creating their own online services that break away from Silicon Valley’s stranglehold on our online life.

Very often I have read articles from European sources about the Silicon Valley companies not respecting European values like privacy. This ends up with the European Commission taking legal action against the powerful Silicon Valley tech kings like Facebook or Google, ending up with placing requirements or levying fines on these companies.

But what can Europe also do to resolve these issues?

They could encourage European-based companies to work on Internet services like Web-search, social networking, file storage and the like that compete with what Silicon Valley offers. But what they offer can be about services that respect European personal and business values like democracy, privacy and transparency.

There has been some success in this field in the aerospace industry with Airbus rising up to challenge Boeing. This was more evident with Airbus releasing the A380 high-capacity double-decker long-haul jet and Boeing offering the 787 Dreamliner jet that was focused on saving energy. Let’s not forget the rise of Arianespace in France who established a competing space program to what NASA offered.

But why are the Europeans concerned about Silicon Valley’s behaviour? Part of it is to do with Continental Europe’s darkest time in modern history where there was the rise of the Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin dictatorships, underscored by Hitler’s Germany taking over significant areas in France and Eastern Europe before the Second World War. This was followed up with the Cold War where most of Eastern Europe was effectively a group of communist dictatorships loyal to the Soviet Union. In both these situations, the affected countries were run as police states where their national security services were conducting mass surveillance at the behest of the country’s dictator.

There are a few of these businesses putting themselves on the map. Of course we known that Spotify, the main worldwide online jukebox, is based in Sweden. But Sweden, the land of ABBA, Volvo, IKEA, Electrolux and  Assa Abloy, also has CloudMe, a cloud-based file-storage service on their soil. It is also alongside SoundCloud, the go-to audio-content server for Internet-based talent, which is based in Germany. The French also put their foot in the IoT space with a smart lock retrofit kit that has Web management with its server based in France.

A few search engines are setting up shop in Europe with Unbubble.eu (German) and StartPage (Dutch) metasearch engines in operation and Qwant and Findx search engines that create their own indexes. But the gaps that I have noticed here is the existence of a social network or display ad platform that are based in Europe and support the European personal and business values.

There are also the issues associated with competing heavily against the Silicon Valley giants, such as establishing presence in the European or global market and defining your brand. Here, they would have to identify those people and businesses in Europe and the world who place emphasis on the distinct European values and know how to effectively compete against the established brands.

The European Commission could help companies competing with the Silicon Valley IT establishment by providing information and other aid along with providing a list of European-based companies who can compete with this establishment. They could also underpin research and development efforts for these companies who want to innovate in a competitive field. It can also include the ability for multiple companies in the IT, consumer-electronics and allied fields to work towards establishing services that can have a stronger market presence and compete effectively with Silicon Valley.

Article

Germany dumps Verizon for Deutsche Telekom over NSA spying | The Register

Previous Coverage on this topic

The French Have Fielded Another Alternative To TrueCrypt

My Comments

The fallout from the NSA spying issues has effectively put Europe on notice. Previously, with the cessation of development for the TrueCrypt,encryption engine, the French and Swiss have worked on their own forks of that engine to keep it alive and to European values.

Now the German government have dumped Verizon Germany and shifted their general communications-technology business from Verizon Germany to Deutsche Telekom, although they implement the latter for their classified-communications needs. This is a country who was bitten twice by the menace of “big government” through the Third Reich and the West-Germany/East-Germany split and fell victim to Angela Merkel, their Chancellor, being spied on by the NSA.

As well, the European Union litigated for European citizens to have the “right to be forgotten” by enforcing Google to obliterate search details on a individual European citizen at their whim. There is even talk of allowing European-Union citizens to litigate in US courts against American-based companies who violate European privacy norms.

Could this mean that one or more European-based companies or consortiums establish search-engines, online-storage services, online-advertising networks, social networks or similar services making sure that this service conforms to and represents European values? Similarly, could people, companies and organisations around the world, like the SBS in Australia, who fear the kind of spying in the US while supporting and underscoring European values end up deserting American companies and start doing business with European businesses when it comes to their information and communications technology needs?