Sadly the EU leadership is a bunch of professional bureaucrats living in a comfy bubble completely disconnected with the people or reality.
As opposed to.. the harsh realities of the Bay Area tech scene?
Euro firms must ditch Uncle Sam's clouds and go EU-native
41–50 of 729 posts
Re: Euro firms must ditch Uncle Sam's clouds and go EU-native
#42> 61 percent of European CIOs and tech leaders say they want to increase their use of local cloud providers.
Oof, the company I work for is proudly telling us we've just migrated from a local provider to Azure, and partnered with Google for "digital sovereignty" solutions. Glad to know that's not the trend everywhere.
Re: Euro firms must ditch Uncle Sam's clouds and go EU-native
#43> This isn't just compliance theater; it's a straight‑up national economic security play.
The woes of LLM contrasts…
In all seriousness, the points made ring true not only for European companies and should make everyone consider the implications of the current situation, as dreary as they are.
Re: Euro firms must ditch Uncle Sam's clouds and go EU-native
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would say there’s even less chance nowadays to generate a fully private set of European alternatives to American cloud offerings. Europes bureaucratization and the growth of the size of states has increased the last 10 years. I have less and less hope that we’re able to set the right free market conditions for real competition to happen. That doesn’t mean that won’t be alternatives to American offerings, but most p…
> set the right free market conditions for real competition to happen Just as a curiosity, what exactly are those "right free market conditions" and where have those been successfully implemented before? Because I think most of us (Europeans) are desperately trying to avoid replicating the American experiment, so if that's the "right free market conditions" I think we're trying to avoid those on purpose. But maybe yo…
If the size of state and bureaucratisation are the main issues, one wonders how China got so far :-)
Re: Euro firms must ditch Uncle Sam's clouds and go EU-native
#45This already happened. Hetzner, OVH, and countless other local cloud companies exist. It is only the path of least resistancd and market inertia, that stops companies from switching. I run on Hetzner and am saving big bucks compared to the ridiculously high priced AWS.
Comparing EU cloud providers to AWS is like comparing a 1963 Zastava to 2025 high end BYD because both of them are cars and can drive from point A to point B.
The Zastava doesn't have a bunch of superfluous computers that track you, is easy to service, and reliable?
Re: Euro firms must ditch Uncle Sam's clouds and go EU-native
#46If Europe wants to reach digital independence it really has to look at thew big picture.
1. European banks mostly sell debt and Nasdaq/Magnificent 7 stocks to their clients. This is what EU citizen invest in.
2. Data centers run on semiconductors made in Asia and cheap energy. Software is almost "the easy part".
3. The whole migration to "the Cloud" (aka MS/AWS/Google), CAPEX to OPEX transition during the ZIRP era was a scam sold by the same ruling class that now tell you need to revert to the previous model.
4. Human capital has to be considered. Having big consulting shops making banks on exploiting foreigners is not a sustainable path to build digital independence (see the content of the recent trade deal with India, an US and Russia ally).
Re: Euro firms must ditch Uncle Sam's clouds and go EU-native
#47Can Europe build AI datacenters though?
Europe has no wafer production and no companies that produce GPUs.
That means it is dependent on Taiwan for wafers and the USA for GPU design.
Then there is the question wether there is a will to invest. Gemini gives me this list of publicly traded companies in the US and what they invested in AI infrastructure in 2025:
Amazon: $100B
Alphabet: $90B
Microsoft: $80B
Meta: $70B
Tesla: $20B
Deutsche Telekom: $1BRe: Euro firms must ditch Uncle Sam's clouds and go EU-native
#48I see this differently.
For European citizens and companies the safest option will always be to have their data in the USA or anywhere where European rulers cannot touch it.
The same for Americans, their data should be safest far away from their government.
Re: Euro firms must ditch Uncle Sam's clouds and go EU-native
#49As a European, I am glad that this is finally discussed in the open! I have made multiple comments in the last weeks that one of the most important things, for me, is an alternative to the Visa/Mastercard duopoly. And yes, I can use an app to pay, but whenever I rent a car or purchase something online, I still use one of these two American companies. Why isn't the European Commission mandating these app payments in different EU countries to connect with each other? Wouldn't that go faster than the digital euro, that is set to come no earlier than 2029?
Re: Euro firms must ditch Uncle Sam's clouds and go EU-native
#50I kind of share the opinion of the FSF Europe that it is less important where software comes from compared to whether it’s libre, but for cloud hardware I really hope that we manage to create competitive European offerings. Maybe we’re lucky and this European initiative will produce more than five Fraunhofer institutes and a gift to SAP.
Without a viable MS Office/Google Docs alternative it's all rather performative. If those get blocked the entire bureaucratic machine stops dead. Hell block just excel and entire countries might actually collapse.