Expert Comments on UK’s Decision To Leave The EU

The UK’s decision to leave the EU has left many questioning what this means for their business. The decision has brought a huge amount of controversy and questions remain about how this will impact how we work; from data locality to data protection. There below a number of comments from technology businesses about what they believe the impact of Brexit will be.

Simon Marrion, EMEA Regional Director at Scale Computing:

“There is no need for businesses to panic. In the short term Britain will still be governed by EU law and I think the markets and currency will stabilise over the near term as the political landscape settles. What some people don’t realise is that over the last 40 years, the UK and continental Europe have moved much closer together anyway, so the changes will be smaller than initially thought. Customers may have some initial concerns about data protection and locality but we believe we will see very little change in terms of data laws. So, it’s business as usual.”

Nigel Tozer, Solutions Marketing Director, EMEA at Commvault:

“The renegotiations of the safe harbour agreement created a lot of uncertainty for businesses, and many organisations chose to repatriate data as a precaution. It also forced some service providers to commission new data centres in case there wasn’t a broadly accepted outcome. Now, Britain’s exit from the EU (Brexit) means the same situation could occur again but across three parties. This time between data sovereignty in Britain and Europe and the US, and vice versa. As the changes won’t be immediate, there is still time to prepare by choosing data management software that is cloud agnostic, then you can migrate and move data easily, and effectively to wherever it needs to be; no lock-in, no extra cost, no hassle.”

Peter Godden, VP of EMEA at Zerto:

“Now that Britain’s EU exit is no longer a what if scenario but a stark reality, it reinforces the critical need for organisations in all sectors and of all sizes to take a closer look at how they can ensure uninterrupted operations. By using BC/DR as a key part of their IT strategy, organisations can improve their IT resiliency, giving them the ability to pivot and dynamically react to such a profound geopolitical and economic seachange,” said Peter Godden, VP of EMEA, Zerto. “Companies should carefully assesses their IT infrastructure to validate that their systems are ready for any disruption that the changing political landscape might cause. Now that Brexit is a reality, companies may find themselves needing to move their data into or out of Britain to align with new compliance regulations, which will truly shine a light on the importance of BC/DR software as many will struggle to manage mission critical data across disparate systems without experiencing downtime.”