John Gazal, Vice President Southern Europe & Brazil at OVHcloudfocuses on the role of the local cloud ecosystem, PaaS and data sovereignty, between PNRR and PSN.
2023 marks an important milestone in the creation of the National Strategic Polewith the recent definition of the ways in which public administrations can request funding and funds to begin the process of migrating data and services to the newly designed cloud infrastructure.
A decisive step that is part of the country’s ambitious modernization plan and in particular of administrations, bodies, organizations and public offices. In this context, some issues have recently come back to the fore for the definition of the strategies that will guide their effective implementation: the role of the Italian players, the type of cloud protagonist of the turning point and the digital sovereignty.
These aspects play a crucial role in order to guarantee, on the one hand, the development of the entire national technological sector, and on the other the protection of citizens and businesses in accordance with the regulations and European sector policies.
As a European player able over the years to build an ecosystem of Italian partners who are protagonists in the field of innovation, OVHcloud fully shares the need for PMI, a service provider, Managed Service Provider and national software companies play a leading role in the ambitious – and undoubtedly challenging – roadmap which intends to change the face of the country in the space of a few years. There are many reasons: from the protection of precious local skills to the possibility of keeping in Italy those talents who are often forced to emigrate to have their professionalism recognised, up to the ability to attract investments from abroad thanks to the undoubted advantages that the subjects involved can obtain from mutual cooperation.
A dynamic ecosystem
To achieve these objectives and allow Italian companies to compete effectively – as well as concretely contributing to the transformation underway – it is necessary to create not only the practical conditions that facilitate their growth, but also to consolidate a nucleus of players in the sector around a shared vision motivated and prepared. And that’s exactly what guided OVHcloud in building a dynamic and evolving ecosystem of partners who have put trust and freedom at the heart of their work as key elements of the cloud, the desire to pursue innovation based on open standards and to build a reliable cloud, while committing to a sustainable development and social responsibility. A vast network of specialists who operate in related sectors and share the same values, with whom we develop solutions and which sees each action carried out in a concerted way, from design to marketing, via scalability and support.
In this context, it seems useful to us to focus attention on the ability of the players in our ecosystem to deliver services in a way that is particularly suitable for the needs of the local and central PA, of the bodies and of the various public subjects – but also of the private ones – involved in the digital transformation project: the Platform as a Service linked to the Public Cloud. An approach in which we strongly believe and which has led us to create the conditions for them to be quickly and naturally integrated into the OVHcloud infrastructure.
PaaS e Public Cloud
For those who use the Public Cloud, opting for the use of PaaS solutions is a choice that has many advantages, since these are characterized by extreme flexibility, the possibility of developing applications with horizontal scalability and ease of use. In addition, they allow you to deploy the infrastructure quickly thanks to a significant reduction in the time required for activities such as configuration of net, backup e safety. Finally, with regard to the already mentioned ease of use, PaaS solutions can also be adopted by those organizations that do not have dedicated internal structures – such as, for example, those in which there are no system administrators.
The nature of PaaS solutions is then strongly connected to the other fundamental aspect of the debate on the transformation enabled by the funds of the PNRR: digital sovereignty.
Data security is, in fact, a crucial aspect that particularly concerns the infrastructure of the National Strategic Hub: when fully operational it is expected to host 75% of the data of the Italian administrations, which should migrate to the cloud by 2026. An invaluable wealth of information on many aspects of national life, from personal data to the patrimonial and health of citizens, from relationships with private companies to strategic assets for the security of the country, whose protection must naturally be at the center of the interest and the work of the players involved.
Cloud Act
In this sense some fears have arisen due to the implications of the Cloud Act United States in relation to the data hosted in the four data centers of the PSN. In fact, the rule allows the US justice or intelligence services to access in some cases data hosted outside the United States, above all by virtue of the fact that some of the technologies and services of the main US hyperscalers are currently adopted in the Pole National strategic.
We believe that relying on continental players – Italian and European – is more important than the mere location of the data center, because there are precisely extra-territorial laws which the non-European hyperscaler may be required to comply with, where an approach such as Open Trusted Cloud of OVHcloud and its ecosystem ensures customers are working with a truly ‘sovereign’ cloud provider“. Even more so if the offer – starting from the PaaS solutions – is Agid certified in Italy and holds the equivalent certifications in Spain, Germany, and in France the certification SecNumCloudconsidered the most stringent in Europe and a candidate to become the standard at European level, as well as the basis for the planned European Cybersecurity Certification Scheme for Cloud Services (EUCS), which should replace the various national schemes and introduce sovereignty and immunity criteria at the highest level high.
Data and Governance
A PSN capable of involving the best Italian excellence, adopting the most efficient cloud methods and guaranteeing maximum data security, while ensuring interoperability, can truly represent a model to be taken as an example even abroad and the first step that the ‘Europe is taking the lead on its own digital regulation, ai data and on the principles of governance: fundamental requisites for effectively facing tomorrow’s challenges, offering cutting-edge, efficient and original services.