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Germany, France launch Gaia-X platform in bid for ‘tech sovereignty’

politico.eu

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Re: Germany, France launch Gaia-X platform in bid for ‘tech sovereignty’

#71

Post by jonathanstrange »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #45

This once again ignores what are probably more profound issues. Europe has tech companies and independent cloud providers. Yet they seem to never grow large or fast enough to become leaders globally or even in Europe. SAP is mentioned, which is a giant. But it is 50 years old. This is not the type of company that is going to challenge the status quo and come up with disrupting technology. I think countries like Franc…

...and the issue is that the products are too expensive due to a vast number of factors. I'm just a private hobby developer, so maybe there are markets where this is different. But when I was looking for cold storage backup and virtual hosting providers in the EU none of the offers were even remotely competitive with US offers. They're twice or even more as expensive and less reputable.

Especially concerning backup this bothers me a lot. I'm currently with Crashplan for Small Business and it works well. I would love to have all my data on EU servers, but where is the EU backup solution with decent backup software that allows me to store more than 2 TB of data for $3.06 per month?

I can't see how this French initiative would change this. If you look up "Gaia-x" it doesn't even come with a web page where you can buy the product or check out its pricing and conditions. It's nebulous vaporware - so typical.

Re: Germany, France launch Gaia-X platform in bid for ‘tech sovereignty’

#72

Post by mlatu »

tannhaeuser wrote: post #59

Does anybody have any technical details to share about Gaia-X? I mean service discovery, interchangeable services/interfaces, etc. has been around since the SOAP days (~ 2003) at least. Cloud can mean many things. Does there exist anything at all or is it just talk at the political level atm? Do they intend to fund new research into bringing these things, or will they pick existing tech?

Well, if you know German there is this longwinded brochure:

https://www.bmwi.de/Redaktion/DE/Publikationen/Digitale-Welt...

Re: Germany, France launch Gaia-X platform in bid for ‘tech sovereignty’

#73

Post by orwin »

linksnapzz wrote: post #23
thamer wrote: post #14

It's no surprise the French government is involved in this. They love these moonshot projects that aim to create the French X for any X that is a successful service by an American company. Qwant[1], launched as "The French Google" with a focus on privacy, serves 10 million searches a day (a ridiculously small number). No one has heard of it, no one uses it, and it's another project with a dream of restoring France to…

Or Outscale; the "French AWS" owned by Dassault Systemes...they did do a great job of cloning the AWS console feature set; but the backend was supposedly all VMware & Cisco UCS. Surprisingly not Bull hw, given that the people responsible for it came from there. Coulden't be cheap to run, and I've always wondered who used it outside of 3DS.

If you want a real "French AWS", you should look at Scaleway (well, their VPS will be entering beta Q3 2020 so it's not AWS yet, but it's coming closer and closer)

Re: Germany, France launch Gaia-X platform in bid for ‘tech sovereignty’

#74

Post by majewsky »

Tomte wrote: post #51
ahartmetz wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The corona app doesn't need to be a huge contract. But SAP and T-Systems can sure waste a huge amount of time and charge a huge amount of money for it.

Everything the federal government does is a huge contract. Of course, in a hypothetical paradise it wouldn't have to be. But in the real world, it is. That's still no reason to be surprised.

From what I know, SAP and Deutsche Telekom were chosen because:

- SAP built an app on very short notice where Germans traveling abroad could register for one of the government-organized flights back to Germany. The government was satisfied with how this played out, therefore they were the first choice for building the app part.

- Telekom is already operating several backend services for the RKI (the German counterpart of the CDC) and the local health offices, so they were the first choice for building the backend part that needs to integrate with these systems.

Disclosure: I work at SAP, but not on the Corona app. I'm not referring to any internal knowledge. What I know, I know from public media.

Re: Germany, France launch Gaia-X platform in bid for ‘tech sovereignty’

#75

Post by enriquto »

icelancer wrote: post #64
pinkfoot wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Learn to pay your programmers properly.

No kidding. When I was in France I was appalled at the rates they were paying software developers. For a collection of countries that boasts better living standards for people, the comparative gap in pay for technical positions is absurd.

A junior developer cannot at all afford renting an appartment in Paris with his basis salary. For other jobs outside of software, it is even worse.

Re: Germany, France launch Gaia-X platform in bid for ‘tech sovereignty’

#79

Post by adev_ »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #60
adev_ wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> France, Germany etc. are charging huge payroll, income and sales taxes to fund their huge welfare states and bureaucracies, but in the process ruining their competitiveness That's a common bashing legend that France/Germany are taxe hell and it is mainly bullshit. I am currently live in France with salary over 100k and my effective taxe rate is under 20%. Both France and Germany (and almost every European country)…

France is a tax and red tape hell. As an individual you may be OK re. tax if you are married with children because they give strong tax advantages to those households [basically they count how many people live on your income when calculating income tax], which must be your case. But overall tax levels are high, taxes are many and complicated, red tape works against you.

> France is a tax and red tape hell.

- Red tape I agree. Administrations are slow and processes cumbersome.

- Taxes I do not agree, France is in the European's average.

Re: Germany, France launch Gaia-X platform in bid for ‘tech sovereignty’

#80

Post by WanderPanda »

adev_ wrote: post #65
realusername wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However, the usual way it is done is a disaster: top-bottom, funding some existing behemoth company that will have no capacity whatsoever to innovate, nor will to do so. But they will get the money because they have good connections. That's the tragedy of the government-backed tech in France. You also have a lot of very skilled tech companies there, but they are not the ones getting government support to grow furth…

>That's the tragedy of the government-backed tech in France. You also have a lot of very skilled tech companies there, but they are not the ones getting government support to grow further. That's almost an universal tragedy. The good techies, the innovative engineers or the avant-garde researchers... Typically, the one doing the work... are generally not the one doing outreach, going around in convention, networking,…

I is too easy to attribute this to some „culture“ that randomly formed and which did not happen in europe. I mean how likely is that? I believe there is a much more structural thing to it
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