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Lidl’s parent company launches cloud unit to offer ‘Made in Germany’ AWS rival

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121–130 of 148 posts

Re: Lidl’s parent company launches cloud unit to offer ‘Made in Germany’ AWS rival

#121
post #3

As a German I would like to point out, that German companies are (as always) too late to the party. Nothing with worldwide relevance in the software, AI nor cloud space came out of Germany / the EU within in the last decades. It's embarrassing :(

Hetzner at least is a pretty good competitor to Linode and Digital Ocean.

Re: Lidl’s parent company launches cloud unit to offer ‘Made in Germany’ AWS rival

#122
post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is why most of them hire consulting shops, as they see IT as a pure cost center.

The irony is that a lot of the consulting shops that specialize in assisting the mittelstand are utterly horrendous money pits. In my capacity as CTO for a german mittelstand company I have had to fire over 80% of the consulting shops i worked with for either blatant incompetence (developing a plugin that fits none of the design document, deploying it straight to production and in the process blowing up the entire AP…

I have been doing consulting in Germany since 2007, after the Nokia sites in Germany went bust.

Usually it boils down to escalations where management gets some goodies from the offshore agency and then everything is good again, from management point of view, naturally.

Re: Lidl’s parent company launches cloud unit to offer ‘Made in Germany’ AWS rival

#123
post #3

As a German I would like to point out, that German companies are (as always) too late to the party. Nothing with worldwide relevance in the software, AI nor cloud space came out of Germany / the EU within in the last decades. It's embarrassing :(

I think we (Europe) need a Shenzhen-like zone (probably between France and Germany). That is a tax-free (15%) english speaking tech zone.

We should do Strasbourg. 2 hours from Paris by train, a few from Berlin and Bruxelle. European name and international notoriety. Great place, climate, used to be fought for by both France and Germany and I think its sounding like a place eastern EU would like as well.

Re: Lidl’s parent company launches cloud unit to offer ‘Made in Germany’ AWS rival

#124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's literally only a problem because the US laws allow the US government to force MS / Google / Amazon to hand over all data stored by German companies on data residing in German datacenters located inside Germany, if an American company is running them. That bullshit caused us a huge amount of headaches when we wanted to deploy our COVID systems to Azure...

CMEK was introduced for this. NSA can have the data but won’t ever read it

It doesn't matter, according to the GDPR encrypted (or hashed) personal information is personal information.

Re: Lidl’s parent company launches cloud unit to offer ‘Made in Germany’ AWS rival

#125
It is a big matter in Germany and the EU, generally, where the data resides. There is some general consensus to avoid "overseas" servers for mission critical stuff, thinking that there is no control over them regarding privacy.

There is literally all kinds of mirrored services (from Dropbox to now apparently this, AWS) in Germany, in case one feels paranoid about respecting local privacy legislations (ie GDPR) and feeling that no foreign government/court order (possibly with a gag order for anyone to ever know) compromises the data.

Re: Lidl’s parent company launches cloud unit to offer ‘Made in Germany’ AWS rival

#126
post #32
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess Lidl targets German Mittelstand and DAX40 companies that already have outsourced to other cloud vendors or are in trouble with their legacy infrastructure. How many of the startups you have in mind didn't switch their infra once they grew? I know not a single one.

Yeah, but the thing is, why would they switch away from AWS/Azure/... unless forced to by regulation? Existing cloud providers can scale to planet sized businesses.

Same reasons some folks in US have US-first mentality.

On top of obvious reason everybody knows damn too well - any US 3-letter agency doesn't give a nanofraction of a f*k about privacy and will use any data to gain any advantage, and specifically treats non US-citizens as subhumans when it comes to several human rights. Geolocation is only theoretical guarantee when stakes are so high.

Some are OK with that, some are not.

Re: Lidl’s parent company launches cloud unit to offer ‘Made in Germany’ AWS rival

#127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't disagree with your remarks about startups and big "software" companies, or rather the lack thereof in the EU. However, that's not even what Schwarz is targeting here. They are targeting the IT departments of existing companies that aren't necessarily in the tech space at all. I know of a bunch of companies who'd love to move a lot of their stuff into a managed cloud, but wouldn't touch a US-owned cloud for co…

> However, that's not even what Schwarz is targeting here. They are targeting the IT departments of existing companies that aren't necessarily in the tech space at all. This is just giving up. AWS and the also rans are better at everything than companies whose executives play golf well, the serious companies you speak of. If the business plan is to target businesses that aren’t really in software and they don’t plan…

This entire thread reads like people actually believe that a business does not have any value until it pulls in billions in revenue.

There are plenty of corporations in Germany that chug along since generation with essentially no profits on their balance sheets.

As long as salaries are paid, you provide a living for your employees, as long as customers are happy, you provide value to the economy. When you have your established niche you do not need growth.

Re: Lidl’s parent company launches cloud unit to offer ‘Made in Germany’ AWS rival

#128
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nothing with worldwide relevance in the software, AI nor cloud space came out of Germany / the EU within in the last decades. Let me list some: * Teamviewer: used to be more famous in the past but it is still a known brand to people world wide * Cherry: more of a hardware thing, but they are known world-wide for their MX switches * Deepl: a xoogler founded startup that is better than Google translate * Soundcloud:…

these are exceptions US produces more unicorns per year that Germany managed in 20 years https://news.crunchbase.com/unicorn-company-list/

Germany is #5 on your provided link if you click on "Countries with most current unicorns". But yes, the USA has 20 times the number of unicorns, and I've said that the german tech industry is dwarved by the US one. More than half the unicorns on that website are in the USA (665 in the USA, 1328 - 665 = 663 outside). My point was that Germany definitely had some world known brands in software, it's more than zero.

Re: Lidl’s parent company launches cloud unit to offer ‘Made in Germany’ AWS rival

#129
post #79
post #3

As a German I would like to point out, that German companies are (as always) too late to the party. Nothing with worldwide relevance in the software, AI nor cloud space came out of Germany / the EU within in the last decades. It's embarrassing :(

> Nothing with worldwide relevance in the software, AI nor cloud space came out of Germany / the EU within in the last decades. Let me list some: * Teamviewer: used to be more famous in the past but it is still a known brand to people world wide * Cherry: more of a hardware thing, but they are known world-wide for their MX switches * Deepl: a xoogler founded startup that is better than Google translate * Soundcloud:…

I'm afraid that though I've heard of most of these, this short list reinforces rather than refutes the claim by covering such wide ranges of area and time period.

Re: Lidl’s parent company launches cloud unit to offer ‘Made in Germany’ AWS rival

#130
post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is why most of them hire consulting shops, as they see IT as a pure cost center.

The irony is that a lot of the consulting shops that specialize in assisting the mittelstand are utterly horrendous money pits. In my capacity as CTO for a german mittelstand company I have had to fire over 80% of the consulting shops i worked with for either blatant incompetence (developing a plugin that fits none of the design document, deploying it straight to production and in the process blowing up the entire AP…

Sounds like a halfway house of getting good working relations with contractors (as individuals not companies) might be a way out of this. I mean a working relationship, not just one based entirely on pay.

(disclaimer, worked as a contractor)

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