Vision from the Top 2013: Frits Veltink, SaaSEnergy
With growing concerns over privacy, cyber security and IP protections, do you believe that federal regulations or legislation will have a significant impact on innovation and growth in the next five years? And if so, in which area(s)?
Trust in the Cloud
driving innovation and growth
“Hi dad, can you spare me a moment” my 13 year old daughter asked me. “Sure honey, what can I do for you”? “ Well I need your credit card for download purposes, it’s actually a free service, and they say it’s necessary within your account set-up”.
“Hi Son, can you help me with my online media invoice”, my 77 year old mom asked me. “ I do not understand the total amount which was charged, it’s much higher than usual”. “And do I get my money back if so?”
These are ordinary daily examples of different generations using services on the web. Both have complete different perception levels in relation to privacy, security and the use of IP. This is certainly the case when (potential) money loss is at stake or abuse of privacy.
The young generation is growing up “almost online themselves”, being educated from the day they are born. And they believe they do not exist if not present on the web. Their real world and virtual world are seamlessly integrated. Where the combination of convenience and socially expected behavior prevails over potential abuse.
Whereas potential abuse of privacy and potential lack of security rules the behavior of the older generation and causes them to lose confidence. And they have the money to decide to move to the cloud or not (not my Mom).
Trust
Within our Industry we feel and often say that we are trusted, but are we? How do we know, how do we check and what is a good reference commonly accepted, which will drive the growth of our industry?
Since we are moving towards a complex process based industry, where we are all tapped in producing, editing, operating and consuming content 24*7, it’s fair to state that gaining “Trust” is a hard ball game.
3Controls + 1
Money is the main driver, technology the enabler and often the cure, but not without providing trust within the fast changing and flexible value chains. Where all parties are in search of 3 main controls: Controlled Access, Controlled Distribution and Controlled Duplication. For you as a provider the problem is you can’t control these alone if you do not manage the whole stack, with all its dependencies out of reach and out of control. Managing these dependencies is often opportunity and incident driven, governed by lack of knowledge and ignorance. The real control issue is within the diverse value chain interfaces of cloud services. Customers and end-users are becoming more aware of that, which translates into increased warranty demands on showing the level of control against measurable frameworks and legislation. This 4th control “Controlled Compliance” will become a business requirement the coming 5 years.
Transparency
On one hand government regulations and legislation will drive this in order to gain more measurable compliance. On the other hand the Industry will drive this in order to gain more trust with customers and end-users. To succeed on both sides more transparency and co-operation is needed within the cloud value chain on processes, procedures and risk mitigation. Already many initiatives have been taken on diverse certification levels. Sofar, from a customer perspective, none seem to cover an end-to-end “assurance” throughout the chain.
Growth
Innovative and supportive standardized services, supporting measurable “trust assurance” and compliance, therefore will become mandatory in providing the trust necessary for sustainable growth. Not only growth within the high potential governmental and corporate market, but especially within the SME and consumer space.
So at the end customers and even my daughter and mom could say “we feel protected” by an appropriate “trust assurance” at the level I need.”
This interview was published in SIIA's Vision from the Top, a Software Division publication released at All About the Cloud 2013.