Germany, France launch Gaia-X platform in bid for ‘tech sovereignty’ • Hacker News Board

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

#491

Post by brnt » Sat, Jun 06, 2020, 6:31 AM UTC

dathinab wrote: post #461

gspr wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wouldn't necessarily call it "being ahead" to embrace increased isolation from other human beings. Yeah, sorry, I wasn't clear. I was referring to stuff like this in GP's comment: > 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! I personally love human interactions, but the ide…

It should be noted that FAZ is not a tech news paper but a local to Frankfurt one. So the article was written by a person having closer to no tech understanding for persons without tech understandings. There are proper tech news paper in which you will not find such thinks. ;). Edit: They do have a technical section but that is 70% cars and the rest are other physical tech thinks like kitchen utensils and vacuum robo…

Faz isnt a tech newspaper but also not a local one. Its famous throughout Europe.

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

#492

Post by brnt » Sat, Jun 06, 2020, 6:33 AM UTC

pnako wrote: post #480

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…

How far behind they are... Imagine having to talk to humans instead of interacting with scripts. I've always known that Germans are barbarians. /s

May the inventor of the customer service chatbot burn in hell. By being forced to communicate through heaven's customer service chatbot.

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

#493

Post by gurkendoktor » Sat, Jun 06, 2020, 7:22 AM UTC

dathinab wrote: post #464

0x5002 wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention the culture at work. I've never experienced a more stuffy, hierarchical, and old-fashioned IT "industry" as I have in Germany. I've been hosting my server with a German company for years. They have recently opened a data center in Missouri - which would be great for latency (I'm in the southeastern US). So, I send an email to the effect of "Hey folks, could you please let me know if it's possible to mi…

Dear Mr. ..., is the direct transition for a common formal getting in Germany. Furthermore formal greetings are used for anything business related in Germany. Through that's getting less common with the younger generation. So yes for a middle aged German speaker with non fluent English skills not using dear or omitting the "Mr" can seem that it maybe might be unprofessional or impolite so they will just add it.

"Dear Mr X" is already slightly informal ("Lieber Herr X"), formal letters should clearly use "Esteemed Mr X" ("Sehr geehrter Herr X") :)

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

#494

Post by Roritharr » Sat, Jun 06, 2020, 8:07 AM UTC

tomonocle wrote: post #486

Roritharr wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>- When I tried to read or watch reviews about SaaS solutions for invoicing / bookkeeping for German companies, the first half of the review is usually spent trying to convince people that moving off paper-based invoices and folders to all-digital is a good idea in the first place. As a CTO of a leading company in this space in Germany, I have to absolutely agree. The technology we can bring to the table is years if…

I'm curious - do you target the small percentage of businesses that truly grok the benefits of a platform that advanced already, or do you try to convince laggards to catch up?

The early adopters have a lot of options, of which we believe to be the best for a certain segment and have been for nearly a decade now.

SaaS Accounting in 2010 was a tough pitch in Germany and for some segments still is.

The laggards have a large industry catering to them so that's where the most revenue is still concentrated.

From the top of my head our last analysis showed that less than 5% of the TAM of SaaS Accounting Solutions in Germany is captured at the moment by any of the active players.

So the strategy is to provide a meaningfully better replacement for existing solutions while not relying on the advantages of the SaaS model.

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

#495

Post by mbrodersen » Sat, Jun 06, 2020, 8:48 AM UTC

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…

> how far behind the old world is, both in tech as in spirit

I always laugh out loud reading nonsense like that. It is only true if you extremely narrowly define "tech" as SaaS solutions. Just to mention a few examples: almost all Fortune 500 companies in the US run on "old world" (Germany7) SAP software. Almost all mobile phones run on "old world" (England) ARM designed chips. The worlds best Go player was beaten by "old world" (England) software. The largest airliner in the world (A380) was designed and built in the "old world". Do I really need to go on?

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

#496

Post by raverbashing » Sat, Jun 06, 2020, 9:18 AM UTC

ur-whale wrote: post #310

joelbluminator wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> What's stopping EU from building an AWS equivalent? 1. Culture, tradition, apathy, risk-averseness 2. Regulations

Here's some food for thought, what stopped the US from building AWS before AWS came to be?

And quite funnily, the first public AWS service wasn't S3 or EC2, it was: SQS (according to Wikipedia) in 2004

I would add a number 0. to your list: Vision, and then they would be in order of importance

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

#497

Post by raverbashing » Sat, Jun 06, 2020, 9:19 AM UTC

hef19898 wrote: post #321

mattlutze wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Are they rummaging through old computer parts to fix their old machines like Japan does?

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

#498

Post by Pedrit0 » Sat, Jun 06, 2020, 10:11 AM UTC

r7ueehhrhrh wrote: post #485

Pedrit0 wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well in the EU we still have opportunities to fight against other's monopolies and try to impose ours. Which a single small country can't and, at the end, is expected to become vassal of the US or China. > laugh at the failures Talking about failures, there are so many in the UK right now that the Brits, rather than laughing, should first focus on their own internal issues, which by the way, are seriously impacting t…

>Well in the EU we still have opportunities to fight against other's monopolies and try to impose ours. Which a single small country can't... Except for Korea, Japan, Singapore, etc. >Talking about failures, there are so many in the UK right now This is why it's good Britain got out sooner than later. Europe, especially France and Germany, can't handle the idea that their 'European way' of doing things hasn't kept pa…

> Except for Korea, Japan, Singapore, etc.

Korea and Japan, being great, ancient and ultra-modern civilizations are totally depending on the US ruler for their own defence while they have to face a very dangerous neighborhood with N-Korea, China and Russia. And they're not very happy about it... And Singapore is a dicatorial city state less populated than London or Paris (an less rich). We could have expected a more ambitious model and destiny for a nation which once ruled the world.

> can't handle the idea that their 'European way' of doing things hasn't kept pace with the times.

Good luck with keeping pace with the times with Boris Johnson, Cummings and Patel... And to get back to the initial topic : what is the plan in UK for a sovereign cloud ? Well I guess the main idea is to give all your data to US companies and abandon any ambition to control your data privacy.

> taking cheap shots at the UK

For a couple of years Britannia has been wandering in the streets with a target painted on her dress and a message: "Hey, don't you dare shoot me, EU assholes"

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

#499

Post by majewsky » Sat, Jun 06, 2020, 12:10 PM UTC

arlcode wrote: post #185

majewsky wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 counterpar…

Quick off topic question: How is the work culture at SAP? Is the public sentiment that it's software is impossibly hard to manage and develop for based in reality? (Disclosure the one time I had to access SAP Data via an API it felt like running against a wall of legacy tables and badly documented interactions -> My sentiment may be biased)

It's a good place to work. As with any large enterprise, there's quite some politics going on between org units and teams, but my direct managers are committed to shielding the team from most of it so that we can stay productive.

As for whether SAP software is "impossibly hard to manage and develop for", I cannot comment on it much since I'm working in cloud infrastructure, so I'm mostly dealing with Docker, Kubernetes, Openstack, etc.

I've seen a bit of SAP software, and IMO a good way to think about it is that an SAP system is kind of like a separate operating system. It's a completely different world. And just like I (a Unix guy) would be completely lost if you asked me to manage a Windows Server system or develop for it, same with the SAP system.

Most people only ever learn to use it in the same way most people who come in contract are only users with no deep admin/dev knowledge. So the question is if you can find someone who has deep-enough knowledge of the system to implement or configure what you need.

That's hard especially for the kernel. If you're running Linux, it's not that hard to hire someone with kernel development experience. For the SAP kernel, it's next to impossible. All these guys work for SAP.

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

#500

Post by Nimitz14 » Sat, Jun 06, 2020, 2:10 PM UTC

mbrodersen wrote: post #495

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…

> how far behind the old world is, both in tech as in spirit I always laugh out loud reading nonsense like that. It is only true if you extremely narrowly define "tech" as SaaS solutions. Just to mention a few examples: almost all Fortune 500 companies in the US run on "old world" (Germany7) SAP software. Almost all mobile phones run on "old world" (England) ARM designed chips. The worlds best Go player was beaten by…

England is the most modern of the large European countries and is obviously not what OP was talking about. He's right, both the regulations and the culture make Germany not a pleasant place to do business.