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With the wildfire growth in digital customer experience, e-signature usage is spreading around the globe. However, as with many such advances in financial services-related technology, simultaneous accommodations must be made with regulators. The combination of these factors is driving eSignLive’s announcement that it will launch instances of its e-signature software in data centers in Europe and Australia to meet the in-country data requirements of regulators.

“Data residency is a strong driver of cloud software buying decisions globally and with eSignLive soon to be hosted on IBM’s global data center network, we will be able to address our customers’ requirements for higher data security, control and compliance,” comments Tommy Petrogiannis, president, eSignLive. “Data residency is particularly important in regulated industries such as banking, insurance, government and healthcare, where visibility into where data resides is necessary for compliance reasons.”

The international opportunity for the expansion of e-signature globally has been gauged by Forrester Research, which has reported a 53 percent annual growth in the use of e-signatures since 2012. The researcher said in 2015 that the number of transactions currently settled using e-signature is over 210 million and is likely to reach 700 million by 2017. Taking advantage of that opportunity, eSignLive announced its intention to expand into six additional countries in June 2015, and the vendor was acquired by VASCO Data Security (Oakbrook Terrace, Ill.), which boosted eSignLive’s access to international markets and its ability to exploit their opportunities.

While eSignLive’s opening of the new data centers in various locations around the world represents an accommodation to regulators, it can better be seen as a mutual accommodation, as regulators respond to the emerging realities of digital commerce both to enable electronic transactions and to address consumers’ privacy and security interests at the same time.

In Europe, the Electronic Identification and Trust Services for Electronic Transactions in the Internal Market (eIDAS) regulation will replace the existing EU Directive as of July 1, 2016, enabling greater mainstream adoption of e-signatures across Europe. In addition, with the recent repeal of the Safe Harbor agreement and its replacement by the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield, organizations will seek solutions that are available on local data centers to ensure that customer and business data will be protected by local laws.

In Australia, a recent eSignLive poll conducted by Galaxy Research revealed that more than 50 percent of Australians were concerned that information in the cloud may not be stored within Australian jurisdiction, and therefore not be subject to Australian privacy laws. To satisfy data residency requirements, especially in regulated industries that want to use cloud services, eSignLive will host its e-signature solution on two major data centers in Sydney and Melbourne. eSignLive is already engaged with a leading Australian bank, as well as technology partners, to drive customer experience and digital transformation initiatives.

Live Within Next Two Weeks

The vendor asserts that the flexibility of eSignLive on IBM Cloud, either on a public or private cloud, allows organizations to scale operations quickly. This scalability extends to eSignLive’s integration with Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics CRM and SharePoint, and helps commercial and government organizations enable users to electronically sign from anywhere, anytime and on any device, a vendor statement says. eSignLive can also be deployed on-premises, provides an active audit trail that captures a visual record of what transpired during a transaction, and can be white labelled to put the spotlight on the customer’s brand.

Instances of eSignLive in Europe and Australia are scheduled to be live within the next two weeks, and the company expects to continue to expand cloud instances of its e-signature solution to meet in-country data residency requirements in additional regions by the end of 2016.

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