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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’

#191

Post by woodpanel »

mattlutze wrote: post #178
heipei wrote: post #164

As a German who's been exclusively working in the US tech space for the past few years, there's so many anecdotes that come to mind to highlight how far behind the old world is, both in tech as in spirit: - Article about Gaia-X in major German newspaper FAZ explained that on AWS you can spin up your own infrastructure, "sometimes even without talking to anyone from sales", from your home! - When I tried to read or wa…

But we are super proud of coining Industrie 4.0, so, that's something. It would be wonderful to see more free and open innovation and investment in a couple of bleeding-edge tech centers in Germany. A lot of the big internationals are in Munich and Berlin is slowly growing steam for startups, but it's a disappointment to me that there's so many Germans with so much wealth prime for investment and creating a culture o…

"But we are super proud of coining Industrie 4.0, so, that's something."

Regarding Industrie 4.0:

Currently at a client of mine, a "hidden champion" i.e. world market leader in industry XYZ (1.6B in revenue), I'm struggling to have them migrate from Cobol to Java. They are using their versioning system as a backup for their data, not for versioning the code. Deployments are done via dragging a zip file somewhere. Every new version means the whole system (handling invoices e.g.) is out of service for 10-14 days.

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

#192

Post by thecleaner »

dntbnmpls wrote: post #104
icelancer wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do they think Google became what it is, or most American companies like Amazon? That the US government funded it and kickstarted them with VC funds? A company like Airbus makes some sort of sense since the government heavily funds Boeing/Lockheed Martin via defense contracts. But Amazon/Google and VC-backed tech startups and companies? Not to mention that the pay for software developers and engineers in general i…

> How do they think Google became what it is, or most American companies like Amazon? Because of us government funding which created silicon valley. Silicon Valley itself is pretty much a DoD project. The foundation of the internet and many of these companies were laid by government - direct spending, subsidies, tax breaks and in amazon's case, legal protection ( they didn't have to collect state taxes ) until fairly…

> Now compare that to intense pushback china gets for any and everything.

Its much easier to trust democratic governments than autocratic ones. If China were a democracy I highly doubt this would be the case. Sure some would push back but many would back it too. The push back that China receives is also because of their economic colonialism and I guess rightfully so. German car companies for example dont receive as much push back. Ericsson/Nokia doesn't receive as much pushback as their counterpart Huwawei.

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

#193

Post by antpls »

PeterStuer wrote: post #161

The problem with European software plays is a monetary problem. EU capital is much more expensive than US capital (ultimately due to the latter's status as the 'world reserve' currency due to the enforced petro-dollar regime). This is why Europe's IT sector is much more focused on B2B servuces/bespoke developments (low risk business models) and hardware/infrastructure (historic manufacturing/telecoms legacy). in term…

That looks like a good analysis to me. There are so many regulations in EU that if something happens, even organically, it has to be in order with EU regulations and priorities. The USA appropriation was never out of EU control, it was rather an accepted strategic choice. (At least, that's how I like to think about it...)

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

#195

Post by thecleaner »

thiht wrote: post #138

I see a lot of hate in this thread regarding a disruption to US hegemony. I guess that's why we need projects like Gaia-X. I wholeheartedly hope it will succeed, and given the companies that are involved in it, I'm pretty confident about it.

I dont hate US hegemony. They are there because they got things right. American companies are more innovayive and fast paced than their European counterparts (assuming they even have counterparts). In general, I would love to have American tech culture with a European safety net.

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

#196

Post by jialutu »

roenxi wrote: post #122

There is a really interesting discussion to be had here about if and what the EUs past policy failing was. Is the issue that they were insufficiently capitalist and drove all their innovators to the US? Is the issue that they let their markets too open, and should have copied the Chinese approach? Is the issue that they shouldn't be concentrating on tech at all and should be leaving it to people better at it than Eur…

Having been to a few tech conferences held by the EU commission, I would say the issue is not (wholly) to it being too open. The biggest problem with the EU is that it is ultimately 27 sovereign states with different language and cultures and very different economic situations.

What the EU tries to do is to bring these 27 states closer by awarding grants based on cross-border collaborations (so company A in France needs to collaborate with company B in Italy) and also helping the poorer states. This is a very rigid process, hence I guess this is why we've not seen much success stories so far.

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

#197

Post by simonebrunozzi »

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…

I'm Italian, living in San Francisco. Sadly, the same thing you say about France, are more or less true for Italy.

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

#198

Post by simias »

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…

I agree that these efforts have been very hit or miss but on the other hand... What should they do instead? Just give up and accept that we're going to simply be technological vassals to America? Or should Macron and Merkel learn Javascript and take the matter into their own hands?

We could've gone the Chinese way and just close the door to American companies, effectively forcing the local populace to use home-grown tools, but we're too nice for that. Instead we try to compete fairly in an open market, except that in practice most multinational corporations manage not to pay taxes in most European countries and they have a huge headstart so it's not really all that fair in the end.

It's easy to be cynical about it but again, tech is too important to just say "well, we lost, I guess we'll increase wine production instead". I want the EU to keep trying.

>Old, well-connected companies like Bull that have zero ability to innovate and not a clue about the domain will rake in hundreds of millions in taxpayer money and deliver some garbage platform that no one will use except other government-funded moonshot companies.

What alternative is there though? The government also tried to help small start ups and incubators with fiscal advantages. We have the brains, we have the means, the government is just trying to make it happen. The hope is that eventually it'll manage to seed the industry. We also do have significant tech companies in Europe today that actually do interesting work, so it's a bit unfair to say that we only have "ridiculous projects" that are "never actually doing anything remotely useful".

I'm French too, I know that we love to be cynical about everything, always see the glass half empty but it's not a very productive attitude. "MPs will make sure their buddies get the contracts", as if France was suddenly the most corrupt country in the world. Look around, see what the rest of the world is doing. We're not doing that poorly.

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

#199

Post by mtberatwork »

sildur wrote: post #95
tpush wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> * A good, free education system * Social security * Good healthcare system * Proper democracy * Politicians who aren't clowns * A total of 500 police killings ... in total since 1950 None of these things (for good or bad) have anything to do with making good tech products.

But they do have all to do with low salaries. My salary is low for American standards, but I can rely on public hospitals, public schools, and public transportation systems. I do not need to save for retirement either. Or for my kids tuition.

> My salary is low for American standards but I can rely on public hospitals, public schools, and public transportation systems. I do not need to save for retirement either. Or for my kids tuition.

I think about this quite a bit, while the median middle class salary is higher in the US, the burden to fund everything out of pocket here is enormous. If salaries are 10-20% higher in the US, much of that goes out the window to fund things like health care, retirement, higher education, daycare/pre-K education, high rents, etc. Things that most Europeans take for granted. All of a sudden that 10-20% gap seems much smaller.

Also keep in mind that not everyone working in tech in the US is making SV level salaries.

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

#200

Post by panpanna »

thecleaner wrote: post #184
heipei wrote: post #164

As a German who's been exclusively working in the US tech space for the past few years, there's so many anecdotes that come to mind to highlight how far behind the old world is, both in tech as in spirit: - Article about Gaia-X in major German newspaper FAZ explained that on AWS you can spin up your own infrastructure, "sometimes even without talking to anyone from sales", from your home! - When I tried to read or wa…

Tech salaries in Europe really are a joke. Even American companies don't pay well here because why would they, the market itself sucks. Combine that with easy immigration to US for Europeans and good affordable education it seems unlikely that talented people would choose to stay here. Part of the reason is the old money in this ecosystem. The problem with digitization in Germany specifically is that our paperwork is…

You can turn that around and say that companies get more for their money in EU.

I mean, investor should like companies with reasonable burn rate...

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