Digital sovereignty is, broadly speaking, a country having control over it’s data, systems and tools. For Canada, that would mean making sure that nobody could turn off your Email suite, or deny you access to your archived data.
But you can have digital sovereignty at a smaller scale too! Being tied to big tech cloud services means that they can deny you access to those services at any time, and for any reason. Ask anyone who has had their social media account deleted or suspended for no reason what if feels like to lose access to an essential tool without warning or recourse.
There are ways that you can secure yourself from the catastrophic results of losing access to your data and tools, and they live outside of the world of big tech.
Hosting on-premise
In the early days of the internet, all large, most medium, and many small business had a dedicated server room (often a repurposed closet) with one ore more towers loudly running their Email, file sharing, backups, and proprietary tools. As the industry fell in love with SaaS, these rooms started to vanish, or shrink down to a modem, router, and switch.
There are drawbacks to on-prem hosting, such as power consumption, noise, and the need for some IT work to be done on-site, and if you just spin up a server and leave it alone you face the possibility of system failure. But there are also substantial benefits to self hosting, not the least of which is full control over your data and tools.
When used in conjunction with a co-located redundant server and robust backups, a self-hosted server can be a cost-effective part of your stack, and can help you keep your data and tools secure and out of the hands of nefarious actors.
Moving to FOSS.
Despite the best efforts of Big Tech, Free, Open-Source Software (FOSS) is thriving. From LibreOffice covering your word processing and spreadsheet needs, to Thunderbird for Email, to the wide variety of Linux distributions, virtually everything that is powering your technology stack is available for free, to use however the licensing allows. And, as a bonus, the nature of Open-Source means that anyone can see exactly what each program does. There are thriving communities built around these tools, and those communities not only work to improve the software, but also to ensure that changes that are made are scrutinized for security issues and bugs.
Picking a reliable cloud partner
It’s the easiest thing in the world to default to Microsoft, Google, or Apple when you’re looking to host your Email, files, or more involved cloud services, but the easiest is far from the best. There are cloud providers who can meet your needs. We use and recommend Infomaniak, who provide a full featured Email + Storage NextCloud solution called KSuite, as well as web hosting solutions and a fully array of communication tools. There are also many other cloud partners that may suit your needs. A little research (with or without our help) can go a long way to better services that are easier on your budget.
Your data is your business. Your data is your life. We can help you keep that data under your control at all times. Let us know your needs, and we’ll find your solutions.