Is Customer Data Location More Important Than Data Control?

When it comes to customer data security and control, the foremost question that comes to mind is the location. Is it cloud or is it in a private data centre? And if cloud, what kind of cloud? Because it is being discussed at length, it clearly matters to people both in IT and in business. We believe that there is a deeper burning issue data managers should be asking. themselves and their vendors. We reflect on this on our own design of the Meiro Customer Data Platform architecture in a way that it foremost respects the client’s current set up. It fully integrates into it and doesn’t force them to alter where and how they store their, presumably, most sensitive asset - the customer data. We believe that this is a game changer.

The right question we should be asking.

Location of the data is just one aspect to consider. The operating model of your CDP vendor is another. Is it a decentralized software application and you can run it where you please? Or is it a more rigid SaaS model where your data is where everyone else’s data is, and you have no say? The one benefit that the SaaS model introduced to the world was the ability to concurrently run software products from one place for thousands of customers at the same time. This drove the price of software down and allowed to offer what used to be available for large enterprise only to smaller organizations under an affordable business model. The downside of SaaS is that it is typically run on one cloud provider and therefore dictates where your customer data is being processed and stored. It's all good until it isn't; when things go wrong, they really go wrong. This is also how 95% Customer Data Platforms in the market work, as SaaS.

At Meiro we have a different mindset. We believe that 2020s are going to be the era of distributed software application, where organizations can define where their data is kept. We have clients using storage on-prem, in AWS, in Google, in Azure or Digital Ocean and we don’t flinch. We have designed our product to keep our clients in control.

What type of deployment is the best for Customer Data Platforms?

As usual, in IT, the answer is ‘it depends’. It depends on the client, situation, their current IT landscape as well as the business use case and security priorities. We believe that modern enterprise software should be flexible and versatile enough to integrate effortlessly with client’s ecosystem, regardless of its location. Meiro’s CDP is compatible with any cloud deployment that the organization is currently using but we can also integrate into an on-premise data centre. It is your call, as the customer. We understand the data stored can be highly confidential and sensitive. Security and protection are built into our DNA. Our platform is compliant with best practices and regulations around data protection and privacy regardless of geographical location. It is our philosophy that the data always stays with our clients and under their management and control. We believe this debate should go beyond the old cloud or on-prem dilemma, as there is more to data control than its physical location. How the software runs is another key point. Is it a decentralized application which you can run wherever you please and have full control over it? We believe the future is the latter.