VOICES
Essay
threatening the digital sovereignty that the principles
of GDPR seeks to ensure.
Do users of these cloud ser vices still have full control
and transparency over their customers’ data? What’s
more, can you ensure digital sovereignty for your own
customers if you are using proprietary software that
inherently limits your control over the data, interfaces,
source code or jurisdiction? I would argue not. Thankfully
though, there is an alternative.OPEN FOR BUSINESS
Open source is ke y to decent ral ising the web and tak ing
b a c k c o nt r ol o f d at a f r o m t h e b i g t e c h f i r m s. G o v e r n m e nt a l
institutions and compan ies in Europe risk losing control
of their data. By companies utilising open-source
projects and government institutions funding open-
source projects, we can remove the dependencies on
large US firms that consume huge volumes of private
data as a business model.
Open source is not a new idea. Open-source software
(where the source code is released under a license in
which the copyright holder grants users the rights to
study, change and distribute it) is often developed in a
collaborative public manner. The main barrier to open-
source adoption over the years has been its historic
reputation – ie that the open-source community is made
up of individual developers coding from their mums’
basements – but, in 2020, things have changed.
Today, open source is big business. M icrosof t acqui red
GitHub in 2018 for $7.5bn; IBM bought Red Hat last year
for $34bn. Most of the sof t ware we use today has some
element of open source within it, in fact Linux servers
have been in use for many years. If you have an A ndroid
phone or a WordPress website, they are running on
open source.
So how does open source enable businesses to be
digitally sovereign?O Transparency: Only open source can guarantee full
control and transparency over their application and
its data.
O Freedom of choice: With open source there is no vendor
lock-in. You have f reedom of choice w ith who you host
your data w ith. You are f ree to move bet ween vendors
or support yourself. You have a choice to host on
premise or in the cloud.
O Standardisation: Providing standard open-source
software for standard services and problems means
that we reduce the effort needed when it comes to
providing ‘commodity’ services.
O Shared knowledge: By building open communities
around software, we are sharing knowledge and skills
that reduce these pockets of proprietary knowledge.
O Security: You have visible access to the code base to
run your own security audits or compliance checks.A FRESH LOOK AT OPEN SOURCE
For organisations of all sizes, there are ample reasons
to take another look at what open-source solut ions could
bring to the table. For growing organisations, open
source enables you to scale up without simultaneously
scaling up costs on user licences.
The first step is to audit the systems you currently
have – or plan to have – that hold or process customer
data. Then look at the alternative solutions available,
including open-source options. Get involved with some
relevant open-source communities to ensure that the
solution you are considering has an active, stable
community behind it that has lots of traction and is
updating regularly.
CRM data is the heart of any organisation and a good
place to start for most. With open-source CRM,
organisations can ensure their data is completely within
their control and maintain their digital sovereignty.
Next, organisations could look at utilising open-source
solutions for groupware services such as email and
document storage (thus, side-stepping proprietary cloud
solutions such as Google Drive). Things like analytics,
security – basically anything that consumes, stores or
processes customer data – should also be considered.
European organisations and public institutions need
to assess their IT strategy and look at opportunities to
embed open source to meet the following objectives:O Maximise innovation through the use of open source
or contributing to open source
O Fully assess the data security and privacy risks to
individual citizens or customers
O Reduce the dependencies they have on singular large
US vendorsAt a government level, we shouldn’t be funding the
development of proprietary software and creating
dependencies that we can’t easily escape. If, instead,
government funding was devoted to investing in open-
source projects, public money would be spent for public
good, providing more control and removing our growing
dependencies on overseas tech giants.
Digital sovereignty is something that can still be
achieved in Europe. As a regulatory powerhouse, GDPR
was a great stride in the direction of digital sovereignty
but much still needs to be done. Europe should be looking
at open source not only to reduce its total cost of
ownership but also as an enabler of digital sovereignty
and data privacy.P
ROFI
LE Murray is CEO of SalesAgility and is
responsible for the company’s strategic
growth plans and initiatives, leading and
guiding its senior management team.
w: salesagility.com