When an industrial company moves monitoring to a cloud platform, one question comes up early, usually from the legal or IT team: where will our data be stored? The answer affects compliance, customer contracts and sometimes the speed of the system. This article explains what data residency means for IoT, what to weigh when choosing a region, and how Hermetry handles it.
What data residency means
Data residency is the commitment that data is stored, and normally processed, in a defined geographic region. For an IoT platform this covers more than a database:
- telemetry from devices: readings, states and events;
- configuration: devices, profiles, dashboards, SCADA screens and rules;
- people data: users, roles, sign-in records and audit logs;
- alarms, alerts and their history;
- backups of all of the above.
A region claim that covers the database but not the backups, or the telemetry but not the audit log, is only partly true. Ask what the commitment covers.
Why it matters for industrial data
Personal data
Industrial telemetry looks impersonal, but much of an IoT platform is about people: user accounts, who acknowledged which alarm, who sent a command, and, in worker safety or fleet use, where a person or vehicle was. Laws such as the EU's GDPR and Türkiye's KVKK set rules for this data, including for transfers outside the country or region.
Customer and sector requirements
Utilities, public bodies and some manufacturers write location requirements into contracts and tenders. Critical infrastructure operators may face sector rules on where operational data may be held. Even where no law demands it, a clear answer shortens procurement.
Latency and reliability
A region close to your sites shortens the round trip between a device and the platform. For dashboards, a few tens of milliseconds rarely matter. For commands and rule actions, a nearby region helps responses feel immediate.
How to choose a region
Work through these questions in order.
- Where are your legal obligations? If most of your personal data falls under the GDPR, an EU region is the simplest choice. If you operate in Türkiye under KVKK, a Türkiye region avoids cross-border transfer questions.
- What do your customers require? Check contracts and tenders for location clauses before you choose.
- Where are your sites? Choose the region nearest to most of them, unless the first two answers point elsewhere.
- Where are your users? Operators and managers sign in from where they work. That matters less than where the data is, but it affects the experience.
If you operate in several regions, consider one account per region. Each keeps its data local, and teams work in the region that applies to their sites.
Questions to ask any platform
- Is each region a separate deployment, or one system with data tagged by region?
- Do backups stay in the same region?
- Which service providers process data, and where are they?
- Can support staff outside the region access my data, and is that access recorded?
- Can I move to another region later, and how?
How Hermetry handles regions
Hermetry runs as separate deployments in the EU, the US and Türkiye. The EU is the default. You choose a region when you sign up, and your account, devices, telemetry, screens, rules and alarms live in that deployment. Data stays in the region; it is not moved to another region for normal operation.
Each region also sets the currency you are billed in: EUR in the EU, USD in the US and TRY in Türkiye, with VAT included in the prices shown. Inside a region, each customer is a separate tenant, and the database itself keeps tenants apart with row-level security. Every action is recorded in the audit log.
On the website you can switch region at any time to see local prices and sign up in the right place. Switching region on the website does not move an existing account; that is a deliberate step you take with us.
A short decision guide
- Mostly EU sites and EU staff: choose EU.
- Sites and staff in Türkiye, or KVKK obligations: choose Türkiye.
- Sites and customers in North America: choose US.
- A mix: talk to us about one account per region.
Read more about deployment and regions and security, or contact us to discuss your case.