CISPE (Cloud Infrastructure Services Providers in Europe) is a non-profit trade association for
infrastructure as a service
The first major provider of infrastructure as a service (IaaS) was Amazon in 2008. IaaS is a cloud computing service model by means of which computing resources are supplied by a cloud services provider. The IaaS vendor provides the storage, net ...
(IaaS) cloud providers in Europe. It was started to aid IaaS providers in explaining their
business model
A business model describes how an organization creates, delivers, and captures value,''Business Model Generation'', Alexander Osterwalder, Yves Pigneur, Alan Smith, and 470 practitioners from 45 countries, self-published, 2010 in economic, soci ...
to policymakers.
Registered in early 2017, CISPE has been operating since 2015.
The association aims to advocate for an EU-wide cloud-first public procurement policy and engage for a European Digital Single Market including the promotion of high-level security and data protection rules/standards as well as avoiding vendor lock-in.
In June 2020, the association became one the 22 founding members of
GAIA-X, announced by the German and French Ministers of Economic Affairs
Peter Altmaier
Peter Altmaier (born 18 June 1958) is a German lawyer and CDU politician who served as Acting Minister of Finance from 2017 to 2018 and as Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Energy from 2018 to 2021. He previously served as Federal Mi ...
and
Bruno Le Maire
Bruno Le Maire (; born 15 April 1969) is a French politician and former diplomat who has served as Minister of the Economy and Finance since 2017 under President Emmanuel Macron. A former member of The Republicans (LR), which he left in 2017 to ...
. CISPE joined forces with European cloud users and providers like
BMW,
EDF,
Safran,
Atos
Atos is a European multinational information technology (IT) service and consulting company headquartered in Bezons, France and offices worldwide. It specialises in hi-tech transactional services, unified communications, cloud, big data and ...
,
Siemens,
Bosch,
OVH
OVH, legally OVH Groupe SAS, is a French cloud computing company which offers VPS, dedicated servers and other web services. As of 2016 OVH owned the world's largest data center in surface area. As of 2019, it was the largest hosting provide ...
cloud,
and Deutsche Telekom.
The CISPE Data Protection Code of Conduct
To help IaaS providers and their customers to comply with the EU
General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which entered into force from 25 May 2018, CISPE released the ''CISPE Data Protection Code of Conduct''. On top of the required compliance to meet with the GDPR, the code also ensures that IaaS customers can choose to have their data located and processed exclusively in Europe, and that the supplier will not re-use a customer's data.
The compliance has to be declared by CISPs/IaaS providers service by service.
The CISPE Code of Conduct was launched on 27 September 2016 at the
European Parliament
The European Parliament (EP) is one of the legislative bodies of the European Union and one of its seven institutions. Together with the Council of the European Union (known as the Council and informally as the Council of Ministers), it adopts ...
,
and the first thirty services had been declared by the first CISPs/IaaS providers on 14 February 2017.
Announcements received press coverage from ''
Le Monde
''Le Monde'' (; ) is a French daily afternoon newspaper. It is the main publication of Le Monde Group and reported an average circulation of 323,039 copies per issue in 2009, about 40,000 of which were sold abroad. It has had its own website si ...
'',
InfoDSI, ''
El Pais
EL, El or el may refer to:
Religion
* El (deity), a Semitic word for "God"
People
* EL (rapper) (born 1983), stage name of Elorm Adablah, a Ghanaian rapper and sound engineer
* El DeBarge, music artist
* El Franco Lee (1949–2016), American p ...
'', ''
La Repubblica
''la Repubblica'' (; the Republic) is an Italian daily general-interest newspaper. It was founded in 1976 in Rome by Gruppo Editoriale L'Espresso (now known as GEDI Gruppo Editoriale) and led by Eugenio Scalfari, Carlo Caracciolo and Arnol ...
'', Silicon, ''Cloud Magazine'', ''Computer Sweden'', Tom's Hardware, L'informaticien, ''Global Security Mag'', ''EU Observer'', ''Politico'', ''
Computer Weekly
''Computer Weekly'' is a digital magazine and website for IT professionals in the United Kingdom. It was formerly published as a weekly print magazine by Reed Business Information for over 45 years. Topics covered within the magazine include outs ...
'', IAPP,
Il corriere della Sicurezza, ''LeMagIT'',
Bloomberg Television
Bloomberg Television (on-air as Bloomberg) is an American-based pay television network focusing on business and capital market programming, owned by Bloomberg L.P. It is distributed globally, reaching over 310 million homes worldwide. It is hea ...
, ITR Manager, Heise.de, COR.COM,
ZDNet
ZDNET is a business technology news website owned and operated by Red Ventures.
The brand was founded on April 1, 1991, as a general interest technology portal from Ziff Davis and evolved into an enterprise IT-focused online publication.
His ...
, ElEconomista.es, IT Channel, EuropaPress, 01net, ''
The Register
''The Register'' is a British technology news website co-founded in 1994 by Mike Magee, John Lettice and Ross Alderson. The online newspaper's masthead sublogo is "''Biting the hand that feeds IT''." Their primary focus is information te ...
'', and CIO Dive.
The CISPE Code has received a positive opinion by the
European Data Protection Board
The European Data Protection Board (EDPB) is a European Union independent body with juridical personality whose purpose is to ensure consistent application of the General Data Protection Regulation
The General Data Protection Regulation (GD ...
on May 19. 2021, and has been finally approved by the competent national Supervisory Authority,
CNIL on June 3, 2021. To become operational, i.e. legally effective, the Code requires an accredited monitoring body, first. ''"Le code de conduite sera opérationnel dès que l’un de ces organismes de contrôle sera agréé par la Commission."'' To date, 3 Monitoring Bodies have been approved (EY CertifyPoint, Bureau Veritas,
LNE
).
Reversibility IaaS Code of Conduct
To anticipate the Free Flow of non-personal Data Regulation (FFoD) that was published in late 2018, the
European Commission
The European Commission (EC) is the executive of the European Union (EU). It operates as a cabinet government, with 27 members of the Commission (informally known as "Commissioners") headed by a President. It includes an administrative body ...
started the SWIPO (Switching and Porting) Working Groups to develop two codes of conduct
for
data portability Data portability is a concept to protect users from having their data stored in "silos" or "walled gardens" that are incompatible with one another, i.e. closed platforms, thus subjecting them to vendor lock-in and making the creation of data backups ...
on the Cloud market (one for Infrastructure as a Service, another for Software as a Service).
These codes were developed to specifically answer the regulation requirement of its Article 6 - "Data Porting". CISPE, together with EuroCIO (the association of European CIOs) has been tasked by the European Commission
to co-chair the SWIPO IaaS Working Group. The SWIPO IaaS code was handed over to the European Commission in November 2019 during the High-Level Conference on Data Economy of the EU Finish Presidency.
Cispe members have declared first services adherent to the Swipo Iaas Code in May 2021.
Environmental impact of cloud infrastructure
The organization set up a Green Cloud Task Force to discuss questions of environmental impact of data centers. The Task Force worked with the European Commission to develop a self-regulatory initiative to achieve our shared goal of ensuring data centres in Europe are climate neutral by 2030: the
Climate Neutral Data Centre Pact
The Climate Neutral Data Centre Pact is a pledge of industry players and trade association of cloud infrastructure services and data centres in Europe to achieve climate neutrality by 2030. It is supported by the European Commission and Frans Ti ...
. The initiative is led by CISPE and EUDCA.
10 Principles for Fair Software Licensing
In April 2021, Cispe launched together with the French CIO association CIGREF "10 Principles for Fair Software Licensing" in order to address fair software licensing terms of the frame of the EU Digital Markets Act.
Members and supporting organizations
Members and supportive organizations manage operations in more than 15 European countries including France, Germany, Italy, Ireland, the United Kingdom, Finland, Sweden, the Netherlands, Spain, Bulgaria, Poland, and Switzerland.
Corporate members of CISPE, or organisations supporting the Code of Conduct, include: Arsys, Art of Automation,
Aruba S.p.A.,
AWS, BIT, Dada, Daticum, Dominion, Enter,
Fasthosts
Fasthosts Internet Ltd is a provider of Internet access and hosting services based in Gloucester, England. The company also operates the domain name registration service UKreg.
Fasthosts was originally started by Andrew Michael, then aged 17 ...
, FjordIT, Gigas,
Hetzner Online, Home,
Host Europe Group
Host Europe Group (formerly Pipex Communications plc and GX Networks) is an American-owned, European-located website hosting, email and domain name registrar company headquartered Hayes, West London. Founded as GX Networks in 1997, the company w ...
, IDS, Ikoula,
LeaseWeb, Lomaco, Netalia, Netcetera, Outscale,
OVHcloud, Seeweb, Serverplan, SolidHost, UpCloud, VTX, XXL Webhosting, and
1&1 Internet
Ionos (formerly 1&1 IONOS and 1&1 Internet) is a web hosting company. It was founded in Germany in 1988 and is currently owned by United Internet. In addition to web hosting, it also provides domain registration, SSL certificates, email service ...
.
Organization
The CISPE General Assembly elects a ten-member board.
The composition of the board of directors should at any time take into account composition rules: a majority of the board should be composed with European-headquartered companies; a majority of the board should be composed of small and mid-caps (< €1 billion turnover) and represent at least three different EU countries (considering worldwide headquarter's location). The first chairman of the board is Alban Schmutz.
The general secretary is named by the board. The first general secretary is Francisco Mingorance.
The Board also names a Code of Conduct Task Force (CISPE CCTF) which is in charge of the evolution and improvements of the CISPE Data Protection Code of Conduct.
The organization is open to any member operating at least one IaaS service in one European country and engaging to declare at least one service under the CISPE Code of Conduct within six months.
References
{{Reflist
External links
CISPE website*
CISPE Data Protection Code of Conduct'.
Free Flow of non-personal Data Regulation
Cloud computing
Non-profit organisations based in Belgium
Organisations based in Belgium