Large corporations are adopting TIO increasingly : through webmail services, through SaaS for CRM or through outsourced e-learning and business process office. Some observers are criticising this move as it creates a strong dependency which may end up for corporations to abandon control on their information to third parties with different goals or motivations.

Indeed, this risk does exist whenever TIO providers restrain access to corporate data, create legal and technical lock-in or do not garantee that corporate data will not be handed over to competitors or tax administration. A careful review of the SLA of the largest TIO providers shows that most services currently pose this risk.

However, not all TIO providers operate their service in such a manner. Open TIO, which garantees total data portability, protects corporations from vendors which are trying to take the ownership of corporate information, either technicaly or legaly. Open TIO should be considered as the absolute minimal requirement for a corporation to move to TIO, although it is not sufficient at all to protect clients from vendor lock-in.

Free TIO provides in the realm of TIO the same level of control as Free / Open Source Software does for software, that is total control. With appropriate disclosure or staff screening procedures crafted within the SLA of TIO provider, Free TIO can even become a suitable way to implement the most sensitive information systems with a security level compatible with military or sovereignty requirements.

Is it possible to relapse the requirements of Free TIO yet keep sufficient control to protect the interests of a corporation ?

Some corporations, probably the majority, accept that some of their Social Freedom is taken out through the possibility for national or foreign intelligence services to screen their phone conversations, emails and thus their trade secrets. This is what we found in some large European corporations, including in defense industry, which are using US based webmail services notoriously known for being part of the Echelon network which is increasingly used to help US based companies competite in foreign markets against European companies. We are not sure though that Executives are fully aware of this situation.

Some corporations do not care about Software Freedom. But they should certainly care that SLAs for mission critical servicesinclude the possibility to download all software required to benefit from the same service on a self operated infrastructure at a well defined cost in various events of failure of the TIO provider.

Some corporations do not care about Access Freedom because they believe that it is the right of their government to restrain access to software to Taliban, Iran, etc. But they would probably care very much that their staff is not refrained from using a TIO service required for the daily operations of the corporation.

Some corporations do not care about Competition Freedom because they believe that it is acceptable to give a monopoly to the creator of an idea which is worth in the realm of intangible services. However, they would probably care if a monopolistic TIO provider was using unfair pricing or access restriction to harm their business, block business processes, take their added value or favour a competitor.

Free TIO defines a baseline for corporations to adopt TIO services without losing control. This baseline may sometimes exceed strict economic requirements. However, the 5 principles of Free TIO are always useful to assess the economic risk of migrating to TIO and to take sound decisions on how much control on their information a corporation is ready to abandon to a third party.