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

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

#331

Post by thatwasunusual »

ody4242 wrote: post #319
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…

You don't need hundreds of services. Give me virtual machines, reliable block storage, file storage and object storage, networking, dns, managed kubernetes, and it will cover the majority of workloads in Europe that run on Openshift or Openstack today.

> Give me virtual machines, reliable block storage, file storage and object storage, networking, dns, managed kubernetes, [...]

But managers wants to _buy_ these services, not be directly responsible for them. That's where the problem lies, as I see it.

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

#332

Post by hk__2 »

embedding-shape wrote: post #117
202508042147 wrote: post #58

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.

> to a EU registrar Which one? I've been using DNSimple for so long, been trying to find something equally developer friendly who is based in Europe but haven't had much success. Used to use Gandi before DNSimple but it's obviously down the drain today.

What about OVH?

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

#333

Post by littlestymaar »

dmix wrote: post #303
nixpulvis wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just as America would like to reduce its dependence on external production, so to do other countries want to reduce their own. We used to live in a world converging toward maximal international trade, when in fact it was exploiting underdeveloped nations. As we progress globally, and as the development gap shrinks, we have noticed power dynamics which weren't well guarded against in the old way. So now what? How do w…

> we have noticed power dynamics which weren't well guarded against in the old way The clearest example is a dependency on a single wealthy nation for military and world policing. It's a good thing for individual countries to be able to project their own foreign policy goals like containing Russia without having to rely on the whims of another country's politics. Even here in Canada we should be able to defend their…

> like containing Russia without having to rely on the whims of another country's politics

That's true, but at the same time it was probably already the case before invasion of Ukraine, and it is definitely the case now.

The main issue is political fragmentation: would Paris and Berlin risk lives of French and German people (soldiers and civilians due to retaliation) to save Vilnius?

But if the answer is true (as obligated by the Treaty of Maastricht, independently of NATO) then Russia stands no chance with conventional weapons against the whole Western Europe, the balance of military, demographic and industrial power is ridiculously lopsided (involving nuclear weapons would also raise the same political question about the French willingness to nuke Russia in retaliation to Russia nuking Poland but if the answer is yes, Russia cannot win a nuclear war either (which everyone would lose)).

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

#334

Post by arter45 »

smarx007 wrote: post #291
arter45 wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, I'll bite. Why is it not a cloud provider? Most importantly, what is a cloud provider in your definition?

https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/dear-hosting-providers-you...

Not sure I follow.

It's one thing to say that a lot of AWS/Azure/Google users take advantage of many managed services.

But saying something is not a cloud provider because they don't provide a specific SaaS is kinda weird, especially if you read the NIST definition of cloud computing or when you consider that not every AWS user is using more than a handful of services (does that make AWS a cloud provider only for more "advanced" users?).

Sure, smaller cloud providers don't usually have all those services, but this doesn't mean they are not cloud providers. They cannot attract users who are more familiar with specific managed services, but they can probably satisfy the needs of other users who are more than happy with a smaller feature set.

Also, limiting yourself to a smaller portion of AWS/Azure/GCP services can facilitate migrations to other cloud platforms (think AWS -> Azure or viceversa), because you're less tied to specific proprietary tooling.

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

#335

Post by newsclues »

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.

Software is a challenge but try replacing hardware. There isn’t a replacement for AMD, Intel or nVidia.

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

#336

Post by nixpulvis »

dmix wrote: post #303
nixpulvis wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just as America would like to reduce its dependence on external production, so to do other countries want to reduce their own. We used to live in a world converging toward maximal international trade, when in fact it was exploiting underdeveloped nations. As we progress globally, and as the development gap shrinks, we have noticed power dynamics which weren't well guarded against in the old way. So now what? How do w…

> we have noticed power dynamics which weren't well guarded against in the old way The clearest example is a dependency on a single wealthy nation for military and world policing. It's a good thing for individual countries to be able to project their own foreign policy goals like containing Russia without having to rely on the whims of another country's politics. Even here in Canada we should be able to defend their…

Well said.

One of the USA's greatest exports is intelligence and higher education, and what has been happening with that and the general anti-intellectual atmosphere is to me the most concerning as an american. Ironically, public education in america has been pretty bad for a while. But I'm going to start rambling here... way too many problems, and no damn leadership.

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

#337

Post by deadbabe »

This is a pipe dream.

Also, Europe loves to impose its draconian internet laws on the rest of the world, if mutual respect for sovereignty is what they want, then they can now learn to accept the constraints of another nation’s cloud environment. Sucks doesn’t it?

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

#338

Post by 9dev »

belorn wrote: post #248
9dev wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So much cheaper to operate and control. Until you factor in the salaries of the new employees you have to hire now, the cost of that hiring process, the compliance and security implications of operating servers on your premises, the ongoing maintenance of the software and operating systems, the new infrastructure to maintain, including but not limited to backup power supply and overall redundancy, the need to manag…

Listened to a story about a fairly large company that switched to cloud and then back to on-premise. When they went cloud they quickly found out that they needed employees to manage the cloud infrastructure. The employee costs were similar for both setup. Compliance and security testing does not go away just because you use cloud. The steps and questions will be different, but regulations like NIS and GDPR have exten…

> Compliance and security testing does not go away just because you use cloud. The steps and questions will be different, but regulations like NIS and GDPR have extensive requirements regardless if you implement it yourself or buy it from an external supplier.

That’s a bit disingenuous. If I don’t operate a physical server rack, I also do not need to take care of physical access control, fire suppression policies, camera monitoring, key handling, and a wide range of other measures I would be otherwise obliged to take care of under GDPR. You can absolutely outsource classes of problems. What’s true is that that doesn’t lift the responsibility from you to check your cloud provider fulfils these obligations, but that’s very different from having to fulfil them yourself.

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

#339

Post by stefanfisk »

boondongle wrote: post #295
stefanfisk wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I can't believe we're talking about China in the context of a Cloud sovereignty issue and this is even a question. Having worked for these Cloud providers China has consistently used bureaucracy to exfiltrate Cloud technologies and to tip the scales of effectiveness of offerings through levers with China Telecom/Unicom. Analyzing the backbone, you could see it in real time. China basically offsets its bureaucracy by…

China weaponizing bureaucracy towards foreign companies isn’t really relevant though.

AFAIK domestic companies operating in China don’t have to endure anywhere near the amount of red tape that EU companies typically do when operating in the EU.

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

#340

Post by ExoticPearTree »

ody4242 wrote: post #319
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…

You don't need hundreds of services. Give me virtual machines, reliable block storage, file storage and object storage, networking, dns, managed kubernetes, and it will cover the majority of workloads in Europe that run on Openshift or Openstack today.

> Give me

Companies have this risk adversity when it comes to trusting all their infrastructure to a person that knows it all and can do it on three physical servers.

I am old enough to have set up services on bare metal servers with what was virtualization or containerization back then (vserver), but today no one wants to know how to tweak Postfix because some emails are not coming through or whatnot.

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