Google Cloud Will Be Ready For GDPR In May 2018

Google has guaranteed it will be ready for the changes the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will usher in across the European Union in May 2018.

At GCP Next 2017 in London,  Diane Greene, senior vice president of Google Cloud, highlighted that when GDPR comes into general effect in around a year’s time, the search company’s Google Cloud Platform (GCP) will be ready for it.

GDPR ready

“Perhaps the most impactful privacy regulation over the last 20 years is the GDPR, which is going to go into effect in the EU in may 2018 and Google is committed to having full support for that by May 2018; we will put that in your contracts that we’re committed to that,” she said. “It is an indication of how carefully we are supporting on this.”

Other than building out data  centres in the Europe and the UK, notably in London, Google will achieve support for GDPR with a partnership with SAP.

Not only will the two companies work on the integration of their services, but Greene highlighted that SAP will become a data trustee for Google over the next three years. This means the database giant, headquartered in Germany, a nation known for its highly strict data sovereignty and protection regulations, will take care of the data belonging to European Google Cloud customers.

Essentially, Google will piggyback on SAP’s established presence in Europe to build out its not insubstantial cloud and data centre footprint it has on the continent.

This is a strong move by Google as it wants to bolster its share of the cloud market in the EU by making it easy for enterprises and so-called ‘digital native’ companies to adopt cloud technologies.

Alongside support for GDPR when it goes ‘live’, Greene noted that Google’s work on cloud technology and the easy integration of application programming interfaces (APIs) in areas such as natural language processing, and Google’s significant backbone infrastructure it has developed over the years to support its own services, will ease the path for companies looking to embrace the missive of digital transformation that is spreading through all manner of public and private sector organisations and industries.

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