Whose data is it anyway?
Over the last decade many software companies have migrated their traditional ‘On Premise’ software solutions over to a ‘Cloud’ platform. There are many significant advantages to this change and it certainly does not look like this trend will reverse any time soon.
At Sapien, we were trailblazers in providing cloud based solutions to the agriculture sector. Being early in the game means you spend quite a bit of time both understanding the issues and educating the market about “what this means for you.”
One of the key issues for cloud based solutions is that the data, that farmers used to collect on their equipment and store on their computers on their properties, now resides ‘in the cloud’. So, if the data is off site, on vendor infrastructure, that may be hosted by a third party, how is that data protected?
The good news is that in many ways the data itself is better protected. The companies involved will very likely have backup and disaster recovery capabilities in place that will protect your data from all manner of events far beyond what you could achieve yourself. But who owns the data? And who has rights to do what with it? Can the data be sold or shared? This is where the fine print becomes relevant!
All customers should be aware of the agreements they are signing up to when purchasing or using cloud based solutions. In some cases, the terms of use will dictate that by using the service you are signing the data over to the vendor. This may mean the vendor can exploit the data for their own gain, including commercialising (selling) the data to third parties that may use it to market their products and services to you, compete with you or provide market information to their own customers about you.
Sapien Technology have always maintained that the advantages to Cloud based technologies lie in the up side provided to clients. All data stored in the Sapien Cloud remains the property of the client and cannot be shared or sold by us without prior permission. We may be the custodians of the data you collect, but it’s your data, about your animals and your business!
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