UKCloud, one of the biggest suppliers of cloud computing services to the UK’s public sector, has expanded its sovereign cloud platform in a bid to enable organisations to store their data in Britain in the event of a no-deal Brexit.
The announcement, timed to coincide with parliament’s meaningful vote on the proposed withdrawal agreement this evening, is likely to appeal to organisations concerned about the effects of a possible no-deal Brexit on UK-EU data flows.
The government has confirmed that it will allow businesses to continue sending data to the EU after Brexit even if it fails to secure parliamentary approval for a deal. But the Information Commissioner’s Office warned last month that British businesses hosting European data in overseas centres may need to review their arrangements ahead of a possible chaotic departure from the EU.
If a UK business wants to share data outside of the EEA and there is no adequacy deal covering the transfer, it may need to put in place a standard contractual clause between itself and the recipient of the data, the ICO warned. “Organisations will need to carefully consider alternative transfer mechanisms to maintain data flows,” it said.
UKCloud’s sovereign cloud platform would, however, enable British organisations to hold European data in the UK. “As a key supplier to the UK public sector, it is our duty to make the arrangements necessary to be ready for whatever Brexit is delivered,” the company’s CEO Simon Hansford said in a statement. “Our additional capacity, as well as arrangements with key vendors to secure our own supply chain, ensures that datacentre, compute and storage capacity will be in place for the potential influx of customer orders.”
The company provides access to a number of cloud platforms, including Microsoft Azure Stack, VMware and Oracle, but the workloads it hosts are stored in UK data centres.
Last month, Giles Derrington, the head of policy at trade body TechUK, warned that too many businesses “remain unprepared for the impact no deal would have on the ability to transfer data”.
source newstatesman
Industry: Data Centre News