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Intercontinental webinars between Europe and America? Now you are assured of a real-time and super secure connection

We recently opened a server farm in the American city Miami. In this way we ensure real-time connections between Europe and North and South America with the guarantee of optimal data protection. The first broadcasts have been very successful.

‘Even before the corona outbreak, we were working on this issue,’ says our CEO Marthijn Pieters. ‘Especially in medical education, we are seeing increasing globalization. While previously education was mainly local, it is increasingly being offered internationally, for example via webinars. Too often there were delays in case of long distances, for example between Rome and Seattle. Such a delay of 5 to 10 seconds is extremely annoying. We wanted to do something about that.’

Local server farms

Online Seminar saw a solution in a local server farm on the North American continent. Pieters explains: ‘When we broadcast a webinar in the Netherlands, we send the video via a secure connection to the server farm in Miami. This happens automatically and in real time. Customer data stays behind; it remains encrypted at the server farm in the Netherlands. Therefore, it is only the video that is sent via the server farm.’

Data security

It is essential that only the video is sent. It is a unique solution when it comes to data security. ‘You often see that data is stored “in the cloud”,’ Pieters says. ‘That means that the party offering the cloud also has access to that data. We don’t want that for our customers. Data legislation in America is also much less strict than in Europe. Legislation that we don’t think is ideal. We value absolute security. That’s why customer data remains encrypted at the server farms in the Netherlands.’

Safety first

At Online Seminar we call ourselves frontrunners in security,’ says Pieters. That may be quite a statement, but we simply think security is extremely important and that is where we set the standard within our industry. Our customers are usually large parties that often possess sensitive information. Just think of the e-mail addresses of participants. Security is crucial and we want to be able to guarantee it at all times.’

First broadcasts very successful

The first broadcasts using the server farm in Miami were very successful. Pieters: ‘The other day, for example, we had a webinar broadcast of a pharmaceutical company in our studio in Amsterdam. The participants were doctors in Brazil. The broadcast went very smoothly, as if the participants were located in the Netherlands as well.’