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Euro firms must ditch Uncle Sam's clouds and go EU-native

theregister.com

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Re: Euro firms must ditch Uncle Sam's clouds and go EU-native

#51

Post by komali2 »

KaiserPro wrote: post #14
KaiserPro wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its past political. I work in energy now, and we host stuff in AWS. So far so normal. However, with the tubthumping about invading greenland, We see that america is willing to evaporate any system that gets in the way of the sun king's world view. Sure, he says now that "we were never going to invade" but given the way you've all just given up your 1st, 4th, 10th and now 2nd amendment, we're not really that sure. Thi…

Also to your point: "can't we just encrypt it?" Its someone else's computer. The TPM is controlled by someone else. You can't really process on a machine that has a compromised urandom/TPM Also the bigger issue is having all your access revoked over night. Thats the bigger fear.

> You can't really process on a machine that has a compromised urandom/TPM

Naive question: does zero knowledge proof solutions help with this?

Re: Euro firms must ditch Uncle Sam's clouds and go EU-native

#52

Post by Zardoz84 »

moffkalast wrote: post #50
adrianN wrote: post #2

I 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.

Fucking Libre Office!

Re: Euro firms must ditch Uncle Sam's clouds and go EU-native

#53

Post by bell-cot »

abc123abc123 wrote: post #26
bell-cot wrote: post #3

Yes, nice, true. But sadly, it feels like pigs will be singing Handel's Messiah before Europe's leaders get off their fat asses and actually do anything about their problems.

Why should they do something about it? They are not IT people. If you want to switch, do it today. Plenty of options exist. If you designed yourself into a corner by utilizing function as a service to program agains ta proprietary API, then you can just as well start from scratch or quit and join a company that knows how to avoid lock-in.

> The are not IT people.

They are not farmers - but it's their job to make sure that their countries have secure supplies of safe food, long-term.

They are not electricians - but it's their job to make sure that their countries have...

They are not soldiers - but it's their job to make sure...

The are not ...

...

(Yes, I suspect that we have rather different concepts of the role of gov't, and the responsibilities of gov't leaders.)

Re: Euro firms must ditch Uncle Sam's clouds and go EU-native

#54

Post by bambax »

adrianN wrote: post #2

I 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.

We already have excellent cloud providers in Europe. But most importantly, most businesses using the cloud would be better off with simple on-prem solutions. So much cheaper to operate and control.

Re: Euro firms must ditch Uncle Sam's clouds and go EU-native

#55

Post by pjerem »

atmosx wrote: post #38
abc123abc123 wrote: post #23

This 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.

Except 95% of companies have no need of ultra scalable super cloud.

If you are a very big SaaS company that is not Google or Apple, you are probably serving hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of unique users. AWS may be convenient, but you don't /need/ it, you can build an infrastructure that will handle such workload with any of the big european providers.

You'll just lose in comfort what you'll gain in data sovereignty and infrastructure costs.

I worked for a 7M€ MRR company that had maybe a million of users who used the software every day. The thing ran on a dozen of OVH servers, including multi-site redundancy.

Re: Euro firms must ditch Uncle Sam's clouds and go EU-native

#56

Post by jillesvangurp »

andersa wrote: post #7

This will happen automatically once an EU native cloud exists with comparable pricing. Get on it. No one will pay 10x to store data in Europe.

But those do exist and they are generally a lot cheaper; not more expensive.

BTW. it's all hosted in the EU if you use it in the EU. Amazon, Google and Azure have data centers all over Europe and using those is not optional for EU based companies. If that wasn't the case, they'd have no business here. Companies legally have to host in the EU and do business with US cloud providers through EU based subsidiaries (mostly based in Ireland. There's a bit of a murky situation with what level of access US intelligence agencies have exactly to all the data or who copies what where and when. But generally, data isn't supposed to leave the continent unless that's needed/required.

I work in Germany. We currently use Google Cloud. It's cheap and convenient enough. Our spend is only 300 euros/month or so. I could replace it. One of our customers insisted on Telekom Cloud; so we support that as well. I've used Hetzner in the past. There are a few other providers. It's not that big of a deal. But it's not a big/urgent issue for us.

However, Vms, object storage, elastic load balancers, managed databases, etc. are all commodities at this point. You don't need to pay AWS 2-3x for that. They aren't magically any better. They certainly aren't any faster. AWS squeezes hard on those VCPUs.

And there's a lot of exotic stuff that some people use. AWS is offering lots of that. But most of those things are a combination of a bit niche and very pricey and more aimed at enterprises than startups. When it comes to GPU hosting, AI stuff, etc. the premium options that Amazon offers really add up really quickly. I'm sure it's fantastic. But many people I talk to in Europe use alternative/cheaper solutions.

For bread and butter hosting, AWS is just expensive and overrated. Big companies don't seem to care much and are sensitive to big brands and the warm fuzzy feeling they get from expensive consultants telling them what to do. And AWS is very good at vendor lock-in. That's also why IBM still exists and why companies like Oracle still do a brisk business separating rich clueless enterprises from their cash. Vendor lock-in is all they have left at this point. But those are at this point the idiot option. AWS is increasingly like that. The times are gone that they are a sane solution for startups. Ten years ago they'd lure you in with "free" hosting for a year and then you'd be hooked for the life time of the startup. But it's not that obvious anymore that is a good choice for cash strapped startups.

Btw. Hetzner now operates in the US. It's a pretty good deal there as well. It's not like you have to give your money to Amazon.

Re: Euro firms must ditch Uncle Sam's clouds and go EU-native

#57

Post by ndr42 »

barnacs wrote: post #39

As if the surveillance and regulation by the unelected EU bureaucrats was any better for the European citizens...

Even if you are right and everything is the same regarding surveillance and regulation: there are other important aspects that make the move to move european data out of the US worthwhile.

Re: Euro firms must ditch Uncle Sam's clouds and go EU-native

#58

Post by 202508042147 »

Last week I migrated our db away from AWS RDS to a European cloud provider. Everything runs fine and we also have it cheaper!

One of our domains is due for renewal in a couple of months. I'm setting up the transfer to a EU registrar for it next week.

This all takes time and it's not the most important thing for the bottom line, but on the long run I'm sure I'll look back and say it was a great investment.

Re: Euro firms must ditch Uncle Sam's clouds and go EU-native

#59

Post by stefanfisk »

ada0000 wrote: post #44
embedding-shape wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 :-)

In what sense is china bureaucratic when it comes to business?

Re: Euro firms must ditch Uncle Sam's clouds and go EU-native

#60

Post by cindyllm »

carlosjobim wrote: post #48

I 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.

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