Euro firms must ditch Uncle Sam's clouds and go EU-native • Hacker News Board

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

#221

Post by pjmlp » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 1:39 PM UTC

ExoticPearTree wrote: post #169

I like it how everyone says that, but there is no european cloud operator able to offer what AWS/GCP/Azure offer. And if you are a start-up and you want to grow, the situation is even more dire. And without a few hundreds of billions of EUR invested _today_ there will still be at least a decade until basic infrastructure will be somewhat on par with current day hyperscalers from the US. And Office suite wise, it took…

Not everyone needs Web scale.

As proven by Huawei, ingenuity can go a great way when friendships go sour.

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

#222

Post by pjmlp » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 1:40 PM UTC

albert_e wrote: post #185

vachina wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The consumers are domestic EU so you don’t really need the reach and availability of the big 3.

It's not just geographic regions around the globe. It is also the wide array of services -- well integrated into their primitives of security, authentication, governance, monitoring and logging, etc Is there a EU cloud provider that provides -- even if limited to EU geography -- the equivalent of Blob Storage + Azure Data Lake Storage + Azure Data Factory or Fabric + Microsoft Foundry with native access to OpenAI and…

You don't need to tick all boxes from a cloud vendor.

Boring technology goes a long way.

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

#223

Post by 2III7 » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 1:40 PM UTC

albert_e wrote: post #185

vachina wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The consumers are domestic EU so you don’t really need the reach and availability of the big 3.

It's not just geographic regions around the globe. It is also the wide array of services -- well integrated into their primitives of security, authentication, governance, monitoring and logging, etc Is there a EU cloud provider that provides -- even if limited to EU geography -- the equivalent of Blob Storage + Azure Data Lake Storage + Azure Data Factory or Fabric + Microsoft Foundry with native access to OpenAI and…

How about not limiting yourself to specific services? If you've built your product around specific cloud providers services then that is the problem not the fact that there aren't alternatives to those seevices.

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

#224

Post by generic92034 » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 1:40 PM UTC

ExoticPearTree wrote: post #169

I like it how everyone says that, but there is no european cloud operator able to offer what AWS/GCP/Azure offer. And if you are a start-up and you want to grow, the situation is even more dire. And without a few hundreds of billions of EUR invested _today_ there will still be at least a decade until basic infrastructure will be somewhat on par with current day hyperscalers from the US. And Office suite wise, it took…

> There’s a chance that the current situation will start to resolve itself in 3 years and we go back to normal, however that might look.

There is almost no chance for that, as lost trust does not return instantly.

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

#225

Post by deaux » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 1:41 PM UTC

dbuxton wrote: post #189

deaux wrote: post #178

Everyone talking about rules and regulations being a blocker to EU software sovereignty is completely clueless. Unfortunately a lot of these people are actually European but they've drank the decades of US koolaid. There are about 200 countries in this world. 195 of them are as of today reliant on foreign-controlled software to a similar degree, which is "completely and utterly in every facet, across consumer, busine…

I played this in my head a few times and don’t get it. I assume we are talking - China - maybe South Korea? - US (or is US not one of the 4?) - Russia (ok this is explicit) I think there might be an interesting idea in here but there is some confusion that’s stopping it coming out Can someone enlighten me?

You're completely right, I mistakenly left out the US so I'm going to edit it in. If you include the US, it's five. The first two are of course trivially correct. I'm leaving them unnamed in the hope that those who write all-knowingly about this topic yet can't instantly name them might realize they don't know much about software sovereignty in the first place.

The third one is definitely a notch lower than the others, as I noted. But still IMO noticeably higher than the other 196. The point still stands if you don't count them.

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

#226

Post by javier2 » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 1:42 PM UTC

ExoticPearTree wrote: post #169

I like it how everyone says that, but there is no european cloud operator able to offer what AWS/GCP/Azure offer. And if you are a start-up and you want to grow, the situation is even more dire. And without a few hundreds of billions of EUR invested _today_ there will still be at least a decade until basic infrastructure will be somewhat on par with current day hyperscalers from the US. And Office suite wise, it took…

It is not that bleak, but yeah. Current solutions leave a lot be desired especially int terms of scalability and redundancy design.

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

#227

Post by BadBadJellyBean » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 1:42 PM UTC

ExoticPearTree wrote: post #169

I like it how everyone says that, but there is no european cloud operator able to offer what AWS/GCP/Azure offer. And if you are a start-up and you want to grow, the situation is even more dire. And without a few hundreds of billions of EUR invested _today_ there will still be at least a decade until basic infrastructure will be somewhat on par with current day hyperscalers from the US. And Office suite wise, it took…

I dislike the idea that if a cloud provider can not provide every service it's not even worth considering. Where is the problem solving. Maybe don't lock yourself into a single vendor and shop around for solutions. Apart from that the cloud offerings of companies like OVH and Scaleway are constantly expanding.

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

#228

Post by blauditore » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 1:42 PM UTC

vovavili wrote: post #187

ExoticPearTree wrote: post #169

I like it how everyone says that, but there is no european cloud operator able to offer what AWS/GCP/Azure offer. And if you are a start-up and you want to grow, the situation is even more dire. And without a few hundreds of billions of EUR invested _today_ there will still be at least a decade until basic infrastructure will be somewhat on par with current day hyperscalers from the US. And Office suite wise, it took…

>And Office suite wise, it took Google about 15 years of pouring money into Google Docs to be almost as good as the MS offering. And yet they _still_ don't have a desktop client for hotkey-driven and very fast-paced workflows, meaning that any serious professional spreadsheet work is still a Microsoft monopoly. If even the US market with all its favorable conditions can't deliver a competing product after years of tr…

What hotkey-driven and fast-paced workflows are you referring to? I used to be an Office user, now G Docs, and I hardly miss anything. Hotkeys do exist, and more complex stuff can be automated quite well with AppsScript.

Maybe I'm not enough of a power user, but these things often sound to me like the 0.1% productivity boosts that are nice to have, but often hardly relevant in the grand scheme of things.

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

#229

Post by Juliate » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 1:42 PM UTC

ExoticPearTree wrote: post #169

I like it how everyone says that, but there is no european cloud operator able to offer what AWS/GCP/Azure offer. And if you are a start-up and you want to grow, the situation is even more dire. And without a few hundreds of billions of EUR invested _today_ there will still be at least a decade until basic infrastructure will be somewhat on par with current day hyperscalers from the US. And Office suite wise, it took…

> I like it how everyone says that, but there is no european cloud operator able to offer what AWS/GCP/Azure offer.

But there is also no requirement for... most of their specific offering to start an online business.

Some people seem to miss this in the picture: you _can_ build without them, outside of them, and fund equivalent technology development while staying outside of them.

It's a matter of strategy and of choice.

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

#230

Post by throwway1922 » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 1:42 PM UTC

vovavili wrote: post #187

ExoticPearTree wrote: post #169

I like it how everyone says that, but there is no european cloud operator able to offer what AWS/GCP/Azure offer. And if you are a start-up and you want to grow, the situation is even more dire. And without a few hundreds of billions of EUR invested _today_ there will still be at least a decade until basic infrastructure will be somewhat on par with current day hyperscalers from the US. And Office suite wise, it took…

>And Office suite wise, it took Google about 15 years of pouring money into Google Docs to be almost as good as the MS offering. And yet they _still_ don't have a desktop client for hotkey-driven and very fast-paced workflows, meaning that any serious professional spreadsheet work is still a Microsoft monopoly. If even the US market with all its favorable conditions can't deliver a competing product after years of tr…

Wrong point. Nothing wrong with browser based clients. Even if they build some desktop client, by the time google (or anyone) does that compatibility Microsoft will change their formats. MS even removed their apps from ChromeOS to make it so. The issue is you can't fix MS. regulators are just too rich to care.

It is even the same as Office for Mac is not 100% compatible with office for windows (or so called CoPilot AI whatever)