Empowering UK-Based Cloud Providers for a Sustainable Future

The cloud computing industry has become a vital aspect of many businesses across the UK. It has transformed how companies deliver their services and enabled remote access to software, storage, and networking. However, Ofcom's recent study into the UK cloud services market has raised concerns about the practices of the two leading cloud providers, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure, and their impact on competition and innovation.

Ofcom's study found that the hyperscalers' dominance in the market, with a combined market share of 60-70%, has led to several practices that make it difficult for customers to switch and use multiple cloud suppliers. These practices include high egress fees, technical restrictions on interoperability, and committed spend discounts that incentivise customers to use a single hyperscaler for all or most of their cloud needs.

These market features can create barriers to entry for smaller cloud providers, limit competition, and ultimately harm customers. Ofcom's concern is that the UK cloud infrastructure market could become too concentrated towards the market leaders, AWS, and Microsoft Azure, making it harder for smaller providers to win business.

With this information in mind, let's explore the reasons to promote UK-based cloud providers and how doing so can benefit the country's digital landscape.

Why support UK-based cloud providers

1. Boosting the local economy: Encouraging and investing in UK-based cloud providers will ultimately contribute to the growth of the local economy. The digital sector has proven to be a significant driver of economic development, and supporting home-grown businesses will create jobs, foster innovation, and stimulate economic growth. This, in turn, will help the UK to become a global leader in the cloud services industry.

2. Enhancing data sovereignty and privacy: Data privacy and sovereignty have become critical concerns in the digital age. Supporting UK-based cloud providers can help address these issues by ensuring that data remains within the country's jurisdiction, making it easier to comply with the UK's data protection laws. This will ultimately increase trust and confidence among businesses and individuals using cloud services.

3. Encouraging competition: Promoting UK-based cloud providers will create a more competitive market, ultimately benefiting consumers and businesses. Competition drives innovation and ensures that companies continue to improve their offerings to maintain their market share. This, in turn, leads to better services, lower prices, and increased choice for end-users.

4. Strengthening national infrastructure: Investing in UK-based cloud providers will contribute to developing a robust national digital infrastructure. This is crucial for ensuring the country's resilience in the face of cyber threats and other potential disruptions. Additionally, a strong domestic cloud services industry will enable the UK to better respond to and recover from crises, ensuring a more secure digital future for all.

5. A step towards a more sustainable future: UK-based cloud providers are subject to local regulations, ensuring they comply with the country's environmental laws and adhere to ethical standards. By supporting these providers, the UK can promote a more sustainable and ethical digital landscape, one that fosters innovation and competition while supporting its long-term environmental and economic goals.

How Centerprise can help

The Ofcom Cloud Services Market Study Interim Report highlights that while international giants like AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud currently dominate the market, compelling reasons exist to encourage and support UK-based cloud providers. Local providers such as Centerprise International can offer businesses access to local expertise and support, compliance with UK data protection regulations, and flexibility in their cloud solutions.

Choosing a UK-based cloud provider can also help businesses avoid the high egress fees, technical restrictions on interoperability, and committed spend discounts often associated with the larger hyperscale providers. This approach can provide businesses with the flexibility to mix and match the best quality services across different providers, ultimately saving them money and improving their services' quality.

The UK government, industry stakeholders, and the wider community must collaborate to implement strategies supporting local cloud providers to achieve this goal. With concerted efforts, the UK can become a global leader in the cloud services industry, benefiting businesses and individuals while ensuring a more secure and prosperous digital future.

As a UK-based cloud provider, Centerprise Cloud understand the unique challenges faced by businesses in the UK and are committed to providing cost-effective, reliable, and secure cloud services that meet your specific needs.

Contact us today to take the first step towards a more sustainable UK-based digital landscape.

Privacy Overview

Privacy Policy

We respect privacy and your rights to control your personal data. We will be clear about the data we collect and why. Your
data is safeguarded by us and we do not and will not sell or rent your data to third parties. We may combine your information
with information we collect from other companies (such as demographic data) to improve and personalize the services
provided to you.

We collect:

Name, email address, IP address and information provided by cookies or similar technology.

Why:

We use this information to share news about events and products offered by CID. Additionally, the IP address helps us to
understand geographic information about our website visitors better so that we can improve our website for everyone.

Buying Products

When you buy from us, you may be asked to provide information so that we can complete your purchase. Information may
include things like your name, phone number, email, shipping/delivery address, and payment information. We collect: Your
name, phone number (optional), email address, delivery/shipping address, and payment information. Why: We use this
information to complete your transaction, follow up with you about your purchase, help with any delivery issues, handle
returns, and other issues related to the purchase of the products.

Use of Email / Anti-Publishing Policy

We will use email to communicate with you after you provide us your email address to gain access to our services. When you
interact with us through your Online Services account, you provide your email address as a way for us to communicate with
you.

We will never request that you provide sensitive personal information, such as bank account numbers, PINs, user names, or
passwords through email.

To verify the destination of an active link, you should hover your mouse over it and review the address information displayed in
the status bar located at the bottom of your browser page; it will display the Web address destination of the link.

Phishing

Web users should be wary of suspicious email. Signs that an email may be a phishing attempt include:

The email contains obvious spelling errors. Phishers do this intentionally in order to avoid spam filters many Internet
providers use.
Links to the Web site contain all or part of a real entity's name, or Web address, but the link itself is not identical to that of the
legitimate Web site. Clicking on these links may take you to a different, possibly malicious Web site or pop-up windows that
ask you to provide, update, or confirm sensitive personal information. (Remember to check the true destination of an active
link by hovering your mouse over it and reviewing the address information displayed in the status bar at the bottom.)

Phishing detection may be enhanced by use of a Web browser that has a phishing filter. The latest versions of most browsers including Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Opera include phishing filters that can help in detecting phishing attempts.

What we collect:

This may include contact information such as your name, email address, phone number, social media identifiers (if you
contact us using a social media channel), and the content of your chats and other communications with CID services team
(including voice recording). In certain situations we may need to collect system configuration & diagnostic information to
enable us to fulfil our delivery & support obligations.

Why:

We collect this information to enable us to deliver the services defined in your service agreemen.

Information obtained from third-party sources

We protect data obtained from third parties according to the practices described in this notice and we also apply any
additional restrictions imposed by the source of data.

How We Use Personal Information

CID uses the data we collect to provide you with the products and services we offer, which includes using data to improve
and personalise your IT experiences. We also use the data to communicate with you, for example, informing you about, new
products or services available, security and other types of updates.

CID uses the data for the following purposes:

Providing our Product Experience
Customer Support
Product Improvement
Security, Safety, and Dispute Resolution
Business Operations
Communication, Marketing and Advertising

Providing our Product Experience

We use data to provide and improve the Products we offer and perform essential business operations. This includes
operating products, maintaining and improving the performance of products, including developing new features,
research and providing customer support.

Customer Support

We use data to diagnose product problems, repair customers' devices and provide other customer care and support services.

Product Improvement

We continually use data to improve our products and services, including adding new features or capabilities, such as
user error reports to improve security features, using search queries and clicks to improve the relevance of search
results, using usage data to determine what new features to prioritise.

Security, Safety, and Dispute Resolution

We use data to protect the security and safety of our products and our customers, to detect and prevent fraud, to
resolve disputes and enforce our agreements.

Business Operations

We use data to protect the security and safety of our products and our customers, to detect and prevent fraud, to
resolve disputes and enforce our agreements.

Communication, Marketing and Advertising

We use the data we collect to deliver and personalise our communications with you. For example, we may contact you
by email or other means of electronic communication to inform you about new CID products or Services, security or
software updates, update you on a support issue, invite you to take part in a survey. We also use cookies and similar
technologies to provide the most relevant advertising to you.

Sharing and Disclosure

CID does not and will not sell personal information about our customers.

We only disclose your data as authorised in this Statement. We may share information with the following types of third parties.

Who We May Disclose your Personal Information to and Why

Third party vendors. CID uses a variety of third-party vendors to carry out services like website management and hosting,
product purchases and shipping, credit card processing and email communications. We only share your personal data as
necessary. To complete a transaction, provide a product or service you have requested or authorised and only with vendors
or agents working on our behalf for the purposes described in this Statement. In this case, your personal information will be
shared with these agents or contractors but only for the purpose of performing services on behalf of CID and in accordance
with this Notice. The up-to-date list of these parties may be requested from CID at any time.

Parties with whom it might be necessary, when we reasonably believe it to be required by law or in connection with legal
proceedings; to prevent harm to CID or its customers; for the prevention and detection of crime or the apprehension or
prosecution of offenders; to maintain the security of our products or to protect the rights or property of CID.

Parties with whom it might be necessary to complete a financial or corporate transaction such as a merger or sale of assets.

We may also share non-personal information such as aggregated data with our partners or publicly.

Communication, Marketing and Advertising Preferences

You can opt out of receiving certain direct communications from CID. If you wish to stop receiving emails from us, you can do
so by following the instructions included in every email sent to you via the “Unsubscribe” tab. We respect your choice, and we
will stop sending you promotional emails once you unsubscribe. It may take up to one week to process your request

Cookies and Other Similar Technologies

We use cookies and similar technologies like pixels, tags, web beacons, and other identifiers to help us personalise our
website for you, understand how users are using our website and help customise our marketing offerings. By visiting our
website you agree to the use of cookies and similar technologies for the purposes described in this Statement.

Cookies

A 'cookie' is a small data file containing a string of characters that is sent to your computer when you visit a website. When
you visit the website again, the cookie allows that site to recognise your browser. The length of time a cookie will stay on your
computer or mobile device depends on whether it is a "persistent" or "session" cookie. CID uses both types of cookies. Session
cookies will only stay on your device until you stop browsing. Persistent cookies stay on your computer or mobile device until
they expire or are deleted. We use the following types of cookies on our website.

Strictly necessary cookies. These cookies are essential for you to browse our website and use its features. Without these
cookies, services like shopping baskets cannot be provided
Performance upped. These cookies collect information about how you use our websites. This data may be used to help
optimise our website and make it easier for you to navigate.
Functional cookies. These cookies allow our websites to remember choices you make and personalise your experience. We
may store your geographic location in a cookie, for instance, to ensure that we show you the website relevant to your area.
Third Party cookies. Third party cookies are those placed by websites and/or parties other than CID. These cookies may be
used on our website to improve our products or services or to help us provide more relevant advertising. These cookies are
subject to the respective privacy policies for these external services, for example, the Facebook Data Use Policy.
Analytics cookies. We use analytics cookies, like those offered by Google Analytics, to help us understand things like how long
a visitor stays on our website, what pages they find most useful, and how they arrived at cidistribution.com. When you visit our
site we store the name of your internet service provider, the parts of our site you visit, the date and duration of your visit, and
information from the device (device type, operating system, screen resolution, language, country you are located in, and web
browser type) you used during your visit. We only capture and store a truncated version of your IP address. It is captured and
stored in an anonymized format by suppressing the last octet so your full IP address never reaches our servers and we never
have access to it.

We process this usage data to facilitate your access to our services (e.g. to adjust our services to the device you are using)
and to recognize and stop any misuse. We also process usage data in an anonymized form for statistical purposes and to
improve our site.

How to control cookie settings

Most web browsers allow you to control cookies through their settings preferences, however if you limit the ability of websites
to set cookies, you may impact your overall user experience. Below you can learn about how to control cookie settings on
popular web browsers:

In addition to cookies, we sometimes use small graphic images known as 'pixels' (also known as web beacons, clear GIFs, or
pixel tags). We use pixels in our email communications to you (if you have selected to receive such communications) to help us
to understand whether our email communication has been viewed. We also use third party pixels (such as those from Google,
Facebook, and other advertising networks) to help us provide advertising that is relevant to your interests.

We use a variety of security technologies and procedures to help protect your personal data from unauthorised access, use or
disclosure. For example, we store the personal data you provide on computer systems that have limited access and are in
controlled facilities. When we transmit data over the Internet, we protect it using encryption.

While no service is completely secure, CID takes precautionary measures to help prevent information about you from loss,
theft, misuse and unauthorised access, disclosure, alteration and destruction. For example, we ensure that our third-party data
centre vendors provide adequate security measures.

Additionally, your data is protected with encryption, such as Transport Layer Security (TLS), during transition over the Internet.
Your personal information is stored on servers that are kept in a controlled environment with limited access. While we take
reasonable precautions to guard personal information we collect from you, no security system is impenetrable.

Other Important Privacy Information

Our Policy Towards Children

CID does not seek to gather information on or from children. We do not knowingly solicit personal information from children or
send them requests for personal information.

Our Retention of Personal Data

CID retains personal data only for as long as necessary and that is relevant to provide services, support your product and fulfil
the transactions you have requested, or for other essential purposes such as complying with our legal obligations, and
resolving disputes and enforcing our agreements. Because these needs can vary for different data types in the context of
different products or services, actual retention periods can vary significantly.

Changes to Our Privacy Notice

CID may modify or update this Statement when necessary to reflect customer feedback and changes in our products and
service; so, please review it regularly. When we update this Statement, we will revise the 'Last Update' date at the top of this
document. If there are material changes to the Statement or in how CID uses your personal data, we will notify you by posting
a notice of such changes before they take effect. We encourage you to regularly review this Statement to learn more how CID
is using and protecting your information. Your continued use of the service or products after any modification to this
Statement will constitute your acceptance of such modification and updates.

Strictly Necessary Cookies Details

Strictly Necessary Cookie should be enabled at all times so that we can save your preferences for cookie settings.

Disabled

If you disable this cookie, we will not be able to save your preferences. This means that every time you visit this website you will need to enable or disable cookies again.

Show Details

Name	Provider	Purpose	Expiration
last_button_track		This cookie is used to remember the user journey on non JSP pages.	Session
GDPR_Consent		This cookie is set by the cookie compliance solution from GDPR_CONSENT. It stores information about the categories of cookies the site uses and whether visitors have given or withdrawn consent for the use of each category. This enables site owners to prevent cookies in each category from being set in the users browser, when consent is not given. The cookie has a normal lifespan of one year, so that returning visitors to the site will have their preferences remembered. It contains no information that can identify the site visitor	Session

3rd Party Cookies

We'd like to set Google Analytics cookies to help us to improve our website by collecting and reporting information on how you use it. The cookies collect information in a way that does not directly identify anyone. For more information on how these cookies work, please see our 'Cookies page'.

Disabled

Please enable Strictly Necessary Cookies first so that we can save your preferences!

Show Details

Name	Provider	Purpose	Expiration
twitter_id	Twiter	This domain is owned by Twitter. The main business activity is: Social Networking Services. Where twitter acts as a third party host, it collects data through a range of plug-ins and integrations, that is primarily used for tracking and targeting.	2 Years

Cookie Policy

What are Cookies?

We use the term cookie to describe cookies and similar technologies such as tags and pixels. Cookies are small data files that websites place on your computer, laptop or mobile device.

Our use of Cookies

We use Cookies for the following purposes:

To improve the performance of our websites by understanding which parts work well, and which don't.
To deliver relevant online advertising to you both on our websites and elsewhere. This is sometimes done by combining data that we already have about you with the data collected through Cookies. These Cookies are placed by us and selected third parties and enable adverts to be presented to you on our and third party websites.
To measure how effective our online advertising and marketing communications are.
To enable us to collect information about how you and other people use our websites.
To improve your experience on our websites, for example we use Cookies to remember the products you've put in your basket and to personalise your experience.

What Cookies do we use?

We use the following Cookies:

Strictly necessary Cookies. These are Cookies that are required for the operation of our website. They are necessary for the safety, security and integrity of the site. For example they help support the structure of the pages that are displayed to you, help to improve navigation and allow you to return to pages you have previously visited. This type of Cookie only lasts for the duration of the time you are visiting the website. When you leave the website they are deleted automatically.
Performance Cookies or analytical Cookies. They allow us to recognise and count the number of visitors and to see how visitors move around our website when they are using it. This helps us to improve the way our website works, for example, by ensuring that users are finding what they are looking for easily. The data is aggregated and anonymised, which means we cannot identify you as an individual.
Functionality Cookies. These are used to recognise you when you return to our website. This enables us to personalise our content for you, greet you by name and remember your preferences (for example, your choice of language or region). These Cookies will remain on your device until you choose to clear it. If you choose to do this, you will need to enter your details each time you visit the site.
Targeting Cookies. These Cookies will collect information about your browsing habits and allow us to show you adverts while you are browsing our site and other sites on the internet. They are set by us or by carefully selected third parties. They help us to understand the performance of our marketing activities and improve the relevance of the adverts that you see.

Blocking or restricting Cookies

You can stop Cookies being used on your device by activating the setting on your browser that allows you to block the deployment of all or some Cookies. Please visit www.allaboutcookies.org to find out how. Please note, if you use your browser settings to block Cookies you may not be able to access all or parts of our site.

If you have a question about this policy please contact us by one of the following means:

By email: DPO@centerprise.co.uk

Policy change

This cookie policy was most recently updated in DEC2020. If we make changes to it, then we will take appropriate steps to bring those changes to your attention.