The Digitalization of Businesses from the Perspective of Digital Autonomy

In this article, we will discuss digital autonomy.

No, this is not an abstract issue relevant only to political offices in Brussels or Madrid; it is a matter with profound practical implications for our ability to compete, create value, and innovate as Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs).

Digital Autonomy Lands in Galicia

To give a concrete example, it is sufficient to mention two projects motivated to enhance Galicia's digital autonomy: on one hand, a data center under construction in Curtis, promoted by Impulsa Galicia and Ingenostrum, which will come into operation in 2027; and on the other, Galnix, a neutral node aimed at dramatically improving connectivity for Galician businesses and citizens.

What is Digital Autonomy?

Let us therefore try to understand what digital autonomy is. A definition we find appropriate is the following: digital autonomy is the ability to manage and maintain control over one's own digital data and processes.

Why is it important? To answer this question, we believe it is useful to outline the factors that negatively affect the digitalization of our businesses.

The Digital Services Market is Dominated by the Hyperscalers

If we take a snapshot of the current cloud service provider market, the situation is quite alarming: the market is essentially controlled by a handful of providers, also known as hyperscalers.

Why is this a problem? For several reasons: the first is that none of these companies have European roots. This does not merely mean that their headquarters and decision-making are located elsewhere, but also implies a clear factor of instability and weakness in an increasingly uncertain geopolitical landscape, with the glaring example of Trump’s tariffs threat.

The second reason is that these companies almost never respect privacy or the laws protecting it, particularly the GDPR, to the point of being fined billions of euros by national and EU authorities in recent years. A recent case is TikTok, which in May was fined 530 million euros by Ireland’s regulator for illegally transferring European users’ data to China.

But the problem of unfair practices is not limited to privacy — it extends to monopolies and anti-competitive behavior. A simple example: have you ever wondered why Gmail is the world’s most popular email service? Undoubtedly, it is a high-quality service, but it would not have reached such heights without two unfair practices: the first is offering a free service to users, with the hidden cost of granting unrestricted access to personal data for advertising purposes; the second is that to use an Android smartphone — a system controlled by the same company — users are forced to create a Gmail account.

Fortunately, the European Union has taken action by enacting the Digital Services Act and the Digital Markets Act, primarily aimed at protecting consumers’ digital rights and ensuring a competitive and fair market for technological services.

Finally, it is essential to emphasize the great risk inherent in concentrating global digital system functionality management in the hands of a few companies. We all recall how, in July 2024, an update to the Microsoft Windows version of the Crowdstrike application caused global passenger air travel and other critical services to be paralyzed for nearly two days.

Building the Corporate Digital Identity

Now that we understand the importance of digital autonomy, let us explore some elements that will allow us to act toward achieving it, focusing on the SME segment.

First and foremost: having a domain name, a corporate website, and a professional email service. Yes, it is also important to include social media in our communication and services promotion strategy, but as a complement to the digital corporate identity provided by those three elements.

Another crucial aspect is carefully considering whether to migrate our most critical applications and data to the cloud and when to do so. In a market aggressively promoting cloud solutions, we believe we should favor local solutions and, when comparing cloud and on-premise options, conduct a long-term analysis of costs, risks, and benefits.

When we migrate, say, our CRM to the cloud, we are outsourcing a critical service and creating a significant dependency on our provider in exchange for making life easier to internal staff in application management. However, we must ask ourselves: what happens if the provider changes its terms or suffers a cyberattack and disrupts the service? Remember that the larger our providers, the greater this risk: on one hand, cybercriminals have greater incentives to target large providers, as they will be rewarded with substantial profits upon success; on the other hand, as customers, we are a drop in the ocean, with limited negotiation power and influence — to say nothing of being negligible. Here, the clear victim is the quality of service.

Another area to consider, closely linked to the previous one, is investment in the technological knowledge necessary to maintain and develop the digital applications we use daily in our work: this implies having different technical professional profiles, such as hardware and network experts, system administrators, and software developers. In SMEs, these profiles are often concentrated in one or two individuals, whom we believe are crucial not only for maintaining IT systems in good condition, but also for defining and executing strategic digital projects that may involve external vendors, such as CRM implementation, private cloud deployment, or corporate website development.

Fortunately, in Europe, there exists an ecosystem of companies and experts offering services and tools to support businesses in their digitalization, always considering digital autonomy as a strategic guideline.

Digital Collaboration in Nextcloud Hub

As an example, and in line with RCA Systems services offering, we can refer to Nextcloud Hub, an open-source collaboration platform that you can run and operate on your infrastructure. With Nextcloud Hub, you can maintain control over documents, metadata, communications, and processes thanks to a tool that allows access to corporate files and folders from all devices, enables real-time editing with colleagues, manages calendars, contact lists, and projects, and facilitates communication through chat, video conferences, and webinars. Nextcloud is developed on one side by a global community of engineers and enthusiasts, and on the other side by Nextcloud GmbH, a German company founded in 2016 and rapidly expanding. In Spain, in addition to the thousands of SMEs already using the tool as a virtual workspace every day, it is the primary technology for projects serving hundreds of thousands of users daily, such as Educamadrid or Nube Medusa in the Canary Islands.

Choosing Your Digital Services: a Strategic Decision

Let us conclude. In this article, we have brieafly outlined what digital autonomy is and why it is important to consider it as a first-class criterion when choosing our digital services, especially with a medium and long-term perspective. We hope we have made it clear that this is not an abstract topic, but something that has very concrete consequences for the development of your business, which is changing ever faster in an all-digital environment. Each step toward digital autonomy makes your company stronger and more resilient.