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EU shoots for €10B ‘industrial cloud’ to rival US

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21–30 of 352 posts

Re: EU shoots for €10B ‘industrial cloud’ to rival US

#21
Given Conway's Law, I wonder what sort of structure this cluster will have. The companies which recieve this funding will have to report according to some standard, which becomes the metric which becomes the target. If the project does not succeed it really should spell the end of the EU's organizational structure...

Does anyone know examples of EU-wide mega-engineering projects like this?

Re: EU shoots for €10B ‘industrial cloud’ to rival US

#22
post #6

As a european, i still think those kind of measures are trying to cure the symptoms by throwing huge pile of cash, rather that fix the core issue : that the private sector in europe is currently unable to produce GAFA-sized companies in the IT sector. My intuition is that once again the money will be grabbed by existing big companies that proved unable to innovate, but are the best at capturing public fundings. EDIT…

The recent COVID-App is a prime example of that. SAP plus German Telekom, neither of which is known for innovation, grab a 60M plus deal to develop a single app. In Italy a startup took over the job for 1/50 of the price and with at least as good or better job. Is the above play a problem for Germany? No. Do you they even understand an problem? I don't think so.

What afraids me is, that here in Germany nobody seems to care anymore. The big numbers are just thrown around and everyone (especially the younger generation) has lost any sense as the media is just cheering along.

Re: EU shoots for €10B ‘industrial cloud’ to rival US

#23

Ridiculous. You just can't buy innovation. You have to set up the right environment for it

Agree. But this would mean: follow the China approach.

- close the market - limits or ban American products. there is no reason why Amazon or Google cannot be copied and made better.

2 main objectives i see there:

- protectionism and ban of American stuff speaks against our "transatlanic"""friendship""" and our "common" values meme - we have a terrible fragmented market. chinese have a 1.4bn people population, Americans do have almost 400m. Try to make an app here in Europe for 20 languages, 20 law systems. it's a nightmare.

Re: EU shoots for €10B ‘industrial cloud’ to rival US

#26
post #6

As a european, i still think those kind of measures are trying to cure the symptoms by throwing huge pile of cash, rather that fix the core issue : that the private sector in europe is currently unable to produce GAFA-sized companies in the IT sector. My intuition is that once again the money will be grabbed by existing big companies that proved unable to innovate, but are the best at capturing public fundings. EDIT…

I agree and IMO a project like this would probably work better if the rules stipulated that it can only be used to fund startups. Eg: only companies younger than 3-5 years old, with fewer than 200 employees, and less than 100M in market cap. Such rules could help prevent established players from grabbing all the money.

Re: EU shoots for €10B ‘industrial cloud’ to rival US

#27
post #6

As a european, i still think those kind of measures are trying to cure the symptoms by throwing huge pile of cash, rather that fix the core issue : that the private sector in europe is currently unable to produce GAFA-sized companies in the IT sector. My intuition is that once again the money will be grabbed by existing big companies that proved unable to innovate, but are the best at capturing public fundings. EDIT…

The same thing happens in the US when we have cash giveaways. See the recent stimulus. It’s pretty difficult to avoid.

Re: EU shoots for €10B ‘industrial cloud’ to rival US

#28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The recent COVID-App is a prime example of that. SAP plus German Telekom, neither of which is known for innovation, grab a 60M plus deal to develop a single app. In Italy a startup took over the job for 1/50 of the price and with at least as good or better job. Is the above play a problem for Germany? No. Do you they even understand an problem? I don't think so.

Excellent example with the app. It's an app that could have been designed and made with 100k, less people and better quality. And quicker. The current app is a nightmare. It shows that i had already 2 low risk encounters - but it doesn't show me when and where! I NEED this info to adapt my behavior! very bad app.

the app doesn't store location information by design for privacy reasons

Re: EU shoots for €10B ‘industrial cloud’ to rival US

#29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The recent COVID-App is a prime example of that. SAP plus German Telekom, neither of which is known for innovation, grab a 60M plus deal to develop a single app. In Italy a startup took over the job for 1/50 of the price and with at least as good or better job. Is the above play a problem for Germany? No. Do you they even understand an problem? I don't think so.

With just the difference that in Germany that app works, in Italy the correct infrastructure/process was not built, sick data information was never uploaded so the app is useless

how do you know the app is working? because we value privacy SO much, we don't even know if the app has ANY effect - taking all the anecdotes aside.

Re: EU shoots for €10B ‘industrial cloud’ to rival US

#30
post #6

As a european, i still think those kind of measures are trying to cure the symptoms by throwing huge pile of cash, rather that fix the core issue : that the private sector in europe is currently unable to produce GAFA-sized companies in the IT sector. My intuition is that once again the money will be grabbed by existing big companies that proved unable to innovate, but are the best at capturing public fundings. EDIT…

The recent COVID-App is a prime example of that. SAP plus German Telekom, neither of which is known for innovation, grab a 60M plus deal to develop a single app. In Italy a startup took over the job for 1/50 of the price and with at least as good or better job. Is the above play a problem for Germany? No. Do you they even understand an problem? I don't think so.

The German federal government had past bad experiences with the company contracted to collect car/truck tolls on federal roadways. The product launch was delayed due to the contractor and thus the government lost lots of revenue from tolls. A 15 year long fight with the owners of the company ensued. Maybe they wanted to avoid that by just putting a large pile of cash onto the table, ensuring that SAP+DTG put their best people behind it. Delays in COVID-App deployment cost real lives instead of just revenue.

It's great that it worked nice in Italy, but giving the contract to a random startup is more of a gamble I think.

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