Big Clouds Scramble Over EU Data Act and Data Transfers
upstart writes:
Arbitrarily inflated lock-in-tastic fees curbed as movement charges must be cost-linked:
Most of the provisions of the EU Data Act will officially come into force from the end of this week, requiring cloud providers to make it easier for customers to move their data, but some of the big players are keener than others.
The European Data Act is an ambitious attempt by the European Commission to galvanize the market for digital services by opening up access to data. But it also contains provisions to permit customers to move seamlessly between different cloud operators and combine data services from different providers in a so-called multi-cloud strategy.
Cloud users have often complained about the fees that operators charge whenever data is transferred outside of their networks. Investigations by regulators such as the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) have led the big three platforms - AWS, Microsoft's Azure and Google Cloud - to all waive egress fees, but only for users quitting their platforms.
While the Data Act doesn't rule out vendors charging data transfer fees, it does expect cloud firms to pass on costs to customers rather than charging arbitraryor excessive payments.
Google is keen to publicize that it is going further than this and offering data movement at no cost for customers in both the European Union and the United Kingdom via a newly announced Data Transfer Essentials service.
There's a catch, of course - Google makes it clear that its service is designed for cost-optimized data transfer between two services of a customer organization that happen to be running on different cloud platforms.
In other words, it is for traffic that would effectively be considered internal to the customer organization and not for transfers to third parties. Google warns that if one of its audits uncovers that the service is being misused in this way, the traffic will be billed as regular internet traffic.
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