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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’

#321

Post by hef19898 »

mattlutze wrote: post #207
woodpanel wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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. Eve…

There are many billions of Euro worth of renovation, modernization and simplification in the Mittlestand.

There are, the moment the famous Mittelstand realizes the need for that. Until that happens, it is an uphill struggle.

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

#322

Post by ur-whale »

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…

Thank you for this, couldn't have put it better myself.

I'll go one step further and make conjecture that the entire Gaia-X thingie is likely from the get-go a nice little scheme to milk public money directly into the pockets of the proponents of the whole affair.

Brussels is teeming with firms whose specialty and sole purpose is fabricating bogus "projects" to squeeze EU research grant money into their and their clients pockets.

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

#323

Post by 411111111111111 »

f6v wrote: post #270
gspr wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the two first points are more specific to Germany than to the old world as a whole. Up here in Scandinavia, we often laugh at how much Germans interact with humans, send letters and faxes, and make phonecalls in their business lives. They are woefully far behind. From what I understand the same is true for the south. While I agree with the basic premise of the last point too I think you maybe underestimate th…

Milage varies in Europe. In Germany, opening a bank account "over internet" means sending paper letters back and forth, while in Belgium I didn't have to sign or send anything by post.

That depends on the bank.

Some allow you to sign the papers online and only require you to authenticate yourself to make the contract binding. This authentication can be done by letter as you said, it in person in the post office or with a video call in which you show your Ausweis.

Your bank just might not support these options, but some do.

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

#324

Post by hef19898 »

adambyrtek wrote: post #287
baryphonic wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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! That quote is quite funny, but I have to wonder: Who speaks to sales before spinning up infrastructure on AWS? The only cases where I see it making sense are when either an entire large enterprise or a non-profit are switching over to AWS and want better rates. F…

That's the whole point, OP is saying that for German press this is still a new and baffling concept.

Admittedly, the FAZ is not representing the most tech-savy demographic over here. regardless, the statement is kind of representative, so.

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

#325

Post by barrenko »

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…

As a self-taught junior, my move from Croatia to Germany in attempt to get a "better IT job" at the end of last year was something between amusingly comical to amazingly absurd. Even before the Corona wave hit.

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

#326

Post by dukeyukey »

davedx wrote: post #211
heipei wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right, and I'm glad I started by saying that I'm German because lots of smaller European countries run circles around us in terms of tech adoption. I don't underestimate the value of quality of life, and I don't blame anyone who knowingly works for a stable, "boring", old-school German company which has been the world-leader in its niche for the past 100 years. But I think many people here are not aware that t…

Yeah in the Netherlands here, and I’ve spent some time recently integrating a German fintech vendor. The cross of new and modern and old beurocratic way of doing things has been almost dystopian and really slowed everything down. Contrast to similar vendors in the UK is quite something.

Can you go into more details on this? I've only worked closely with UK/USA companies and I'm really interested how they compare to German/French ways of doing things. Does the Netherlands more closely align to the Uk/USA on this?

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

#327

Post by ur-whale »

adev_ wrote: post #36
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…

Pretty good summary yes. The idea itself of supporting Europeans alternative to face American and Chinese tech giants is by itself noble (and I think necessary). 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. If you think about it, i…

You said "competitive".

You must understand that in Europe, using such language in good company is considered rather rude, or at the very least, irresponsible.

Europe is the place where there are still strongly held belief that proper centralized planning will beat market forces every time.

The fact that this mental model doesn't fit reality is considered a minor detail, it's just that the plan needs a little bit of refinement.

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

#328

Post by barrenko »

joelbluminator wrote: post #237
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…

The talent is there, the money could be there if Europeans governments take it seriously, so why not? What's stopping EU from building an AWS equivalent? It's not rocket science. If Europe could come up with companies like ASML which are at the top of chip engineering, they can definitely build software infrastructure. Some of your points ring true but A) What used to be doesn't mean it will always be B) U.S has it's…

Those systems and any other functioning and innovative system will be by definition built bottom-up and not top-down which the EU will never figure out and always actively discourage.

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

#329

Post by effie »

9q9 wrote: post #179
realusername wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's definitely an IT brain drain in France due to low salaries, very few people of my former school actually work for a french company anymore, they almost all went somewhere else to get a better pay. In the post-covid world of increased remote working, the brain drain will likely increase tenfold since developers won't even have to leave the country anymore.

I work with a lot of French IT people, they are all from the Grande écoles , and amazing on average. None of them work in France. What a loss!

In this case, the loss is very one-sided, most people/countries benefit from this.

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

#330

Post by twic »

jason0597 wrote: post #305
f6v wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's that this is where the market is However, that also means software engineers don't create that much value. I've been hiring developers myself, it takes half a year to get a senior engineer, even with extremely relaxed immigration laws like in Germany, just due to shortage. It's a weird paradox. If companies had enough money, I'd imagine SV engineers jumping on a plane to Berlin right away.

>If companies had enough money, I'd imagine SV engineers jumping on a plane to Berlin right away. How many SV developers speak German? Germany isn't quite as English-friendly as other places in the EU (Netherlands, etc.), and if you don't speak the language you aren't going to enjoy yourself in the town very much

Anecdotal, but i know several developers who don't speak German but have moved from London to Berlin and love it.
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