The Forthcoming General Data Protection Regulation in the EU: Higher Compliance Costs Might Slow Down Small and Medium-sized Enterprises' Adoption of Infrastructure as a Service

• Author: Liliia Oprysk
• Pages: 23-31

23

JURIDICA INTERNATIONAL 24/2016

Liliia Oprysk

Doctoral student

University of Tartu

The Forthcoming General Data

Protection Regulation in the EU

Higher Compliance Costs Might Slow Down Small and Medium-

sized Enterprises’ Adoption of Infrastructure as a Service*1

1. Introduction

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) accounts for a signif‌i cant proportion of cloud computing services over-

all, and, according to Gartner, in 2014 ‘the absolute growth of public cloud IaaS workloads surpassed the

growth of on-premises workloads for the f‌i rst time’*2. A recent report from RightScale*3 showed that 95% of

the organisations surveyed were already using or experimenting with IaaS*4, with 89% of respondents using

public cloud services*5. Moreover, 32% of small and medium-sized businesses (enterprises with fewer than

1,000 employees for the purpose of the report) were already using cloud infrastructure heavily at that time,

as compared to 25% of enterprises in general*6.

The widespread adoption of cloud-based technologies among these companies does not come as a sur-

prise: small and medium-sized enterprises are more likely to seek a less expensive option for maintaining

their IT infrastructure and to have a smaller budget at their disposal. Neither is their interest in IaaS, which

is usually the f‌i rst step in adoption of cloud-based solutions, as it requires less preparation and integration

than do Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Software as a Service (SaaS) options. Indeed, IaaS provides sev-

eral benef‌i ts when compared to traditional computing infrastructure provision*7. Nevertheless, it has to be

noted that the resources a client acquires under IaaS are pretty much the same ones it can obtain from a tra-

ditional IT outsourcing (ITO) provider. Aspects that dif‌f er are the process of obtaining and expanding the

resources; the nature of business relations between the parties; and, f‌i nally, the contractual arrangements.

Қ The author would like to thank Dr Idir Laurent Khiar, Dr Elia Ambrosio, Prof. Karin Sein, Prof. Aleksei Kelli, and Prof. Katrin

Nyman-Metcalf for their feedback that contributed to improving the text of the article.

қ Gartner says worldwide cloud infrastructure-as-a-service spending to grow Ҝқ.ҡ% in қҙҚҞ. Қҡ.Ҟ.қҙҚҞ. Available at http://

www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/ҜҙҞҞққҞ (most recently accessed on ҝ.Ҡ.қҙҚҟ).

Ҝ RightScale is one of the leading providers of cloud management solutions, conducting an annual survey of technical profes-

sionals to assess the state of the cloud computing market.

ҝ RightScale State of the Cloud Report қҙҚҟ. Available at https://www.rightscale.com/lp/state-of-the-cloud (most recently

accessed on ҝ.Ҡ.қҙҚҟ), p. қ.

Ҟ Ibid., p. Ң.

ҟ Ibid., p. Ҡ.

Ҡ S. Leimeister, M. Böhm, C. Riedl, H. Krcmar. The business perspective of cloud computing: Actors, roles, and value networks.

ECIS қҙҚҙ Proceedings. Available at http://home.in.tum.de/~riedlc/res/LeimeisterEtAlқҙҚҙ-preprint.pdf (most recently

accessed on ҝ.Ҡ.қҙҚҟ), p. Ҡ.

http://dx.doi.org/10.12697/JI.2016.24.03