Last Friday, when most of us in Europe were more concerned about beating the heatwave, American owned Diligent bought Germany’s Brainloop.

“It’s almost unprecedented that an American takeover could be seen as having national security implications. China has been the focus of recent anxieties about security, with Berlin blocking two high-profile Chinese acquisitions in the past two weeks… But since the encryption expert channels confidential data belonging to major industrial players, the German government is getting the jitters.”- Handelsblatt (Berlin fears Brainloop takeover could compromise DAX secrets)

The essential difference between the US and EU when it comes to data protection, is their point of focus. The US seems more concerned with integrity of data as a commercial asset, while the EU, with the GDPR, has firmly put individual rights before the interest of businesses. In the EU, it will be companies that will be held liable in the eyes of the law and pay if they fail to protect EU data subjects’ data.

What’s the alternative for German companies looking for a secure digital board portal?

That’s where we, Convene, come in.

Why are we the better alternative, now that Diligent have taken over Brainloop?

  1. We are not a start-up but a subsidiary of a large IT firm with a 25 year history. The software that we sell was conceived as an internal solution for Azeus Systems' international board.
  2. Our software is available in all major European languages including German.
  3. We offer end-to-end encryption of data, and other security measures befitting board level confidentially needs.
  4. Even pre-GDPR, all our instances of secure cloud hosted accounts were in Ireland, with a back-up in Germany. This is easy to reverse. Thanks to Brexit, we now offer hosting in the United Kingdom.
  5. Some of clients prefer to keep their data in-house, which is an option we cater for with our on-premise hosting solution.

Diligent has been slowly acquiring the competition: BoardPad in 2017, BoardLink in 2015, and so on. Monopolisation of an industry often leads to limited innovation, lower maintenance of quality, and limited pricing competition.

And we continue to witness this first-hand as many of BoardPad’s clients have been switching over to our platform.

Contact us today for a free trial of our digital board platform and app and see how you can retain control of you company’s corporate governance and secure board collaboration.

Lavaniya Das

Written by Lavaniya Das

Lavaniya Das is the Head of UK and EU Content at Azeus Convene UK.

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