Customers can choose to store sensitive code in the EU only with Microsoft's GitHub, supporting data sovereignty

 

Microsoft owned development platform GitHub announced on Tuesday that it is enabling business users to restrict the storage of their confidential software code to EU data centers. The action is a part of a larger political drive for digital "sovereignty" and is made in an effort to comply with the bloc's stringent data protection regulations.



The business announced that users of its GitHub Enterprise Cloud will have more discretion over the location of their repository data, with the option to store it only on servers owned by Microsoft Azure located in the EU, as opposed to other nations with potentially laxer data protection laws.



Businesses will have authority over the "data residency" of software code hosted on GitHub, which essentially gives them the ability to select the geographical areas in which the data is retained.



According to GitHub, enterprise users will be able to select custom namespaces relevant to their business that are distinct from their open-source experience, as well as manage and regulate user accounts.



Additionally, business users will receive improved disaster recovery and business continuity assistance, which may be useful in the case of cyberattacks or other failures impacting actual server hardware.



The company solely provides GitHub Enterprise Cloud, a subscription service, to enterprises. Businesses that use its enterprise-focused solutions typically host closed-source software projects on the platform instead of open-source ones.





GitHub is best recognized for being a place where teams and lone programmers go to write and save open-source code. But the company has been promoting a business-to-business sales model more and more, particularly since Microsoft acquired it in 2018.



According to GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke, organizations that hold closed-source projects must have complete control over where critical code is kept and managed, as well as the degree of user access that is allowed. This is especially true in the EU.



Dohmke said via a video chat with CNBC that "Europe is the place where cutting-edge regulation and laws around privacy and data protection and many other things, like AI, were born." "Exciting frameworks for data transfer between countries are available here."



He continued, "Data residency has emerged as a key factor in any enterprise's cloud strategy, and businesses want to know where vital assets like data are kept."



According to GitHub's senior legal officer Shelley McKinley, closed-source code is now seen as the "crown jewels" of a business's digital strategy.



She told CNBC, "European customers were demanding more from us in this area." Since the early days of cloud computing, the European Union has been at the forefront of this push toward data residency.



GitHub intends to expand data residency within its GitHub Enterprise Cloud to Australia, Asia, and Latin America in the future.

EU's push for "sovereignty" in digital



The EU's broader political and regulatory focus on so-called digital "sovereignty" is connected to GitHub's data residency effort.



To strengthen its technological sovereignty and lessen reliance on the US and China, the EU is pouring billions of dollars into what it regards as basic and essential technologies. At the moment, the area depends a lot on technology that are developed outside its boundaries. High-ranking officials are currently attempting to alter this.



In a much-awaited study released earlier this month, former president of the European Central Bank Mario Draghi recommended an additional 800 billion euros in annual investment to boost the bloc's competitiveness, identifying technological innovation as a critical sector in need of development.



"Europe has to radically realign its joint efforts to bridge the innovation divide with the US and China, particularly in cutting-edge technology. Draghi stated in the report that "Europe is stuck in a static industrial structure with few new companies rising up to disrupt existing industries or develop new growth engines."



According to Dohmke of GitHub, Europe is now trailing the US and China in terms of cloud computing usage.





Data center operator Stackscale reported that last year, 45% of EU firms adopted cloud computing, an increase of roughly 4% from 2021 to 2023. However, it is especially low in some nations.



In France, for instance, just 27% of EU businesses use cloud technology; in the Nordic region, adoption rates are far higher, with 78% of businesses in Finland utilizing the cloud.



However, Dohmke expressed optimism regarding the direction of technological improvements on a worldwide scale. To make it easier for developers inside businesses to create software code using AI, GitHub released GitHub Copilot Enterprise, a new version of its "Copilot" programming helper, in November of last year.



Dohmke claims that programmers who have been using its Copilot helper have generated code 55% faster than those who have not used the AI tool.



He envisions a time in the future when artificial intelligence will further automate the labor-intensive process of developing code.



According to him, developers will soon be able to hire "AI-native agents" to help them with certain coding jobs. Artificial intelligence will also make it simpler for non-programmers to write their own software. (*)

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