Where is the public cloud heading? How can SMEs work with the technology? And what role does the partner ecosystem play in choosing a public cloud provider? At the invitation of EuroCloud Deutschland_eco e. V. (EuroCloud), cloud initiative providers from all over Germany recently met in Frankfurt. The reason? To set up a cloud initiative.

With its eye on the forthcoming European Court of Justice decision on blanket data retention, the eco Association warns against an obligation to constantly subject private life to surveillance, and thereby hopes for a ruling which favours fundamental rights in Europe.

According to a new survey commissioned by eco – Association of the Internet Industry,  56% of Germans  believe that digital technologies and applications can have a positive impact on the climate footprint in the future.

Dr. Béla Waldhauser, spokesperson of the Alliance for the Strengthening of Digital Infrastructures, advocates a holistic view of digital infrastructures, as they contribute to achieving the European climate targets & ensure energy-efficient use of digital applications.

EuroCloud Deutschland_eco e. V. (EuroCloud) is now giving the providers of public cloud-based solutions and services their own voice: EuroCloud Native, or ECN for short, is not only intended to be a specialist forum for cloud-native topics, but also to pool the interests of frequently smaller, young and highly specialised companies and start-ups.

Climate, economy and coronavirus – in her first State of the Union address, Ursula von der Leyen not only addressed the major challenges facing the EU, but also solutions such as GAIA-X. OVHcloud and T-Systems are now exploring for the first time how the GAIA-X guidelines can be translated into concrete offers.

“Digitalisation in schools is not just a nice to have, but a basic existential requirement for the future of Germany as a location for education and business,” says eco Chair Oliver Süme.

The German federal government published the evaluation report on the deletion of child sexual abuse material*, CSAM for short, on the Internet for the year 2019 on 16 September 2020.

The Internet industry will be one of the most dynamic industries in Germany in the coming years, as a new joint study by the eco Association and the management consultancy Arthur D. Little shows. Despite the Covid-19 pandemic, during which individual large segments of the Internet industry suffered slumps, an increase in revenue of almost 75 percent to approximately 253 billion Euro is expected by 2025.

eco sees a clear confirmation of its own assessment and critical analysis of the draft German law on combating right-wing extremism and hate crime and the Network Enforcement Act (NetzDG).

In her keynote speech on the State of the European Union today, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen set out what the eco Association sees as important goals for the Digital Decade, and addressed some of the most urgent challenges in the context of digitalisation.

The Importance of Consent to and (Not) Advertising in Marketing Emails: The second in the series of webinars and workshops offered as part of the 2020 CSA Digital Email Summit took place online on 7 September 2020. Alexandra Koch-Skiba and Sebastian Fitting of the eco Complaints Office, and the CSA’s Astrid Braken took the attendees through legal issues related to permission and advertising in the context of email marketing. Read a quick write-up of the webinar here.

“When it comes to sustainability, digitalisation should be seen as part of the solution, not as part of the problem,” says Alexander Rabe, Managing Director of eco on the occasion of the presentation today by Environment Minister Svenja Schulze of plans for more energy and resource efficiency in digital infrastructures.

The German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi) today passed the now 10th amendment of the German Act against Restraints of Competition (GWB). eco takes a critical stance on the planned changes in competition law.

This week, the German Bundestag intends to pass a motion on the “Future Technology Artificial Intelligence”, which will include a statement on the European Commission’s AI White Paper. In February of this year, the EU Commission announced stronger regulations in its AI White Paper.  

The Importance of Documenting Consent for Commercial Emails: The first of the series of webinars and workshops offered as part of the 2020 CSA Digital Email Summit took place online on 30 August 2020. The staff of the Complaints Office, Alexandra Koch-Skiba, Peter-Paul Urlaub and Sebastian Fitting took the attendees through legal issues related to the documentation of consent to use email addresses in email marketing. Read a quick write-up of the webinar here.

With large-scale Internet companies currently implementing DNS over HTTPS (DoH), Klaus Landefeld, Vice-Chair of the eco Association, explains the significance of the move, and why network operators and ISPs should be working on implementation themselves.

The DoH protocol, designed to improve user privacy and security, has both its upsides and downsides. A new eco Association paper sets out to clarify some of the complexities and provide recommendations for implementation and deployment.

The eco Association is working together with well-known partners on a Blockchain Governance Framework. Interested parties are invited to join the network of trust as consortium partners.

Logistics is the bottleneck in e-commerce: Eight out of ten online shoppers (85 percent) would like to see a delivery time before the last click when making a purchase. If this information is missing, one in three (32 percent) discontinue their purchase. A trend that is actually intensifying for frequent customers: 44 percent will not snap up an offer on the web if it remains unclear when products will arrive.

Data-driven recruiting and the use of artificial intelligence (AI) are some of the examples that Pauline Schmidt, recruiting specialist and Head of Sales at MoBerries, will be using in the German-language webinar on 26 August. In the following interview, she reveals more about the potential that data-driven recruiting offers.

The GDPR has been on everyone's lips; not only since the recent ruling on the EU-US Privacy Shield. With a new guide, the EuroCloud member gridscale offers SMEs some orientation in their cooperation with cloud providers. An interview with CEO Henrik Hasenkamp and Marketing Director Jens Wardenbach of the PaaS & IaaS Cloud Hosting Provider from Cologne, Germany. 

Early this autumn, the CSA Digital Email Summit will virtually bring together the world’s top minds in the email industry. Commencing on 31 August 2020, the Certified Senders Alliance (CSA) will host numerous presentations and workshops. The CSA expects hundreds of experts to attend the series of events, enabling them to participate in an online exchange about the latest technologies and trends for sending commercial emails.

The European Court of Justice overturned the EU-US Privacy Shield Agreement in July 2020. This means that cloud providers and other companies should act act now and immediately check their privacy notices under Articles 13 and 14 of the GDPR, and amend these if necessary. EuroCloud offers providers a checklist for data protection without the Privacy Shield as a download.

Significant increase in energy efficiency: 12 times lower energy consumption per GB of data transmitted in data centres compared to 2010 Constantly decreasing CO2 emissions (30% less by 2030) despite increasing demands on computing power Global energy efficiency potential through cloud computing not yet exhausted Berlin,...

In light of the Corona crisis, the German federal government should focus more on digital policy issues. 65.4 percent of Germans share this view, according to a representative survey commissioned by eco – Association of the Internet Industry from the opinion research institute Civey - a survey in which 2,500 people in Germany took part at the beginning of August.

The German Federal Network Agency (BNetzA) today published the latest draft of its security catalogue. eco welcomes the fact that the BNetzA has not succumbed to political pressure and has focused on appropriate criteria for the security of telecommunications networks.

In June, the German Federal Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection (BMJV) published a discussion draft on a Second Act on the Adaptation of Copyright Law to the Requirements of the Digital Single Market. With the related Act, the controversial Art. 17 of the EU Copyright Reform (DSM Directive) is also to be transposed into German law.

The Internet Society Organization Member Advisory Council serves as an advisory body to the Internet Society senior management and board, on matters affecting the general welfare and effectiveness of the global Internet and its users.

Companies can still enter the race for the renowned eco://award until Monday, August 10, 2020, with their top digital achievement.