DataControl: Reliable, Secure and Comprehensive cloud backup as a service solution

Project Information

DATACONTROL

Grant agreement ID: 876008

DOI

10.3030/876008

Project closed

EC signature date 25 July 2019

Start date 1 July 2019

End date 30 September 2019

Funded under

• INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Innovation In SMEs

Total cost

€ 71 429,00

EU contribution

€ 50 000,00

Coordinated by

SEVERALNINES AB
Sweden

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - DATACONTROL (DataControl: Reliable, Secure and Comprehensive cloud backup as a service solution)

Reporting period: 2019-07-01 to 2019-09-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Businesses lose between € 803 and € 14,949 for every minute their operation is stalled in revenue, productivity and recovery expenses. Moreover, 58% of businesses have no backup plan for data loss, with 60% of companies that experience data loss shut down within six months. Given the numbers, there is a critical need for tools and strategies that can assist in speeding up recovery of the company’s databases if any disaster strikes, such as ransomware attacks, hardware failure or even human error.
Our objective is to provide the backup solution that allows companies all the backups of different databases from one centralised tool, to ensure absolute governance over the company’s most valuable asset: their data.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

During the last three months we have been able to validate the technical, commercial and financial viability of our novel technology. The Feasibility Study reports the results of the three tasks proposed during the Phase 1 proposal:
Task 1: Technical feasibility assessment: We have outlined a technical plan, which, among other things, will allow us to support different database systems stored both on-premises (company’s data centre) and off-premises (cloud storage). It includes several development and validation steps and will define all necessary developments to ensure our international market expansion. We have paid attention to those technical risks that could compromise the successful development of DataControl. We have quantified them with a proper risk assessment methodology and have proposed mitigation measures to reduce the risks.
Task 2: Commercial feasibility assessment: We have analysed the open-source database market by identifying our potential end users and their needs. Next, we have paid attention to the global market and have decided on our targets and our marketing strategy. We have also listed and studied our main competitors and their strengths. Finally, we have elaborated an IPR-analysis to guarantee Freedom-to-Operate for DataControl.
Task 3: Financial feasibility assessment: Our financial plan includes performing a full cost/benefit analysis, in which we have evaluated the total investment required to achieve the technical developments and prepare the commercial exploitation.
Finally, we have established the business model (including a pricing strategy), defined a set of specific objectives, supported by SMART KPIs, defined our strategic partners, studied our scale-up potential and analysed our impact on the market, addressing both business and European challenges. Finally, we have estimated both the profits and the Return on Investment (RoI) of DataControl.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The few current solutions provide support for backup storage both on premises and for cloud storage, only feature popular cloud providers like Amazon or Microsoft, without the possibility to control the location of the stored backup. We go one step beyond the state of the art by integrating in our software local European cloud storage providers, giving users the possibility to always control the exact location of their data at city level. Moreover, while available solutions cover, on average, the 49.86% of the open-source database market, our solution will cover the 74.3% of the market from one single solution.
Technologically, we expect to integrate at least 20 European cloud providers and 10 different database systems by the end of the project.
Our project will address business challenges of GDPR compliance, cybersecurity and data management, and European challenges of sustainable growth (as data centres provide a substantial economic impact to the regions in which they are located) and carbon footprint (as corporate data centres are a major source of energy consumption while studies show that the full transition towards cloud-based services would entail 98% of electricity savings) and will contribute to the European cloud leadership (by giving more visibility to local cloud providers).

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