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

#121

Post by omnimus » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 12:55 PM UTC

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.

I have seen transitions from MS suite at universities and I don't think what you are saying is true.

First assumption is that there are no alternatives so you can't replace Excel as a software. Obvious ones for Excel - LibreOffice, Collabora, OnlyOffice or Grist (which i highly recommend). The paradoxical problem is there is no clear THE ONE so organizations get into decision paralysis and never move anywhere.

The other assumption is that even if there were alternatives people will not adopt them. In reality this is rarely issue. Turns out users/employees/students actually don't care much what software they have to use. They just use what is available or what they are told to use. So the reason why people use MS Office is actually because it's mandated from the top. Lawyers use it because state/gov/court communication requires it. Students use it because they need to submit thesis in MS Word. It's socially locked in.

I've been at a university which switched over the summer from MS Office to LibreOffice. The results were boring. 40k people just adopted it, no drama, some liked it more (works on linux yay), took some people few weeks to learn/adjust. People are used learning new things.

So can we stop with that story that 40 year old software which barely changed in last 20 years can't be replaced?

This whole digital sovereignty is i think extremely scary proposition for Microsoft because just as they are now mandated solution by most western world... they are one law away (all state/university communication must be with libre software) to be on the other side of their current mandate / lock in.

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

#122

Post by new23d » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 12:56 PM UTC

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.

netim.com has been reliable over the years for me

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

#123

Post by cindyllm » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 12:57 PM UTC

iLoveOncall wrote: post #109

p1anecrazy wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Be the change you wish to see. If professionals like you join European companies it will help grow their business and offer competitive salaries.

That's absolutely not how any of this works. If they can get top talent for half the salary they won't suddenly start paying more. There is only one solution: EU governments heavily subsidize those European cloud providers which enables them to offer top salaries and therefore attract top talent.

[dead]

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

#124

Post by atoav » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 12:57 PM UTC

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.

At Hetzner 4 TB storage (S3 compatible) with 4 TB traffic cost 27.32 Euro/Month.

According to AWS calculator the same 4 TB cost 102 Euro/Month with their standard S3 tier.

So I gladly pay 0.3x to store data in Europe, with a European service.

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

#125

Post by smallnix » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 12:57 PM UTC

blell wrote: post #67

preisschild wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Unelected EU bureucrats" Clearly shows you have absolutely zero idea about what you are talking about and just take your talking points from people like Elon Musk

Educate us, tell us when did we vote for the commission and the likes of von der Leyen. (If your answer is "you didn't vote for it, but you voted for someone who voted for someone who voted for it in a secret ballot" I am going to chuckle)

Even that would be wrong. Von der Leyen was strong armed into her position by Merkel and the other heads of states, overruling Timmermans nomination.

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

#126

Post by embedding-shape » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 12:59 PM UTC

hartator wrote: post #62

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…

Contradictory regulations is one of the symptoms of overregulation. I.e., complying to GDPR means you can’t comply to cybersecurity laws. US has less of those.

Sounds like a broad blanket statement, have any specifics about this?

GDPR and cybersecurity laws are designed to be compatible, not mutually exclusive, but I'm sure there are edge-cases. Still, what exact situation did you find yourself in here in order to believe they're mutually exclusive?

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

#127

Post by oellegaard » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 12:59 PM UTC

We recently moved two companies from AWS to Scaleway which is the closest to AWS you find in EU AFAIK. It's like AWS 5-10 years ago, eg much fewer managed services and you don't have as much tooling, but it works great and it is also cheaper. You do get managed kubernetes, Postgres and Redis plug and play though.

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

#128

Post by malka1986 » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 12:59 PM UTC

raincole wrote: post #95

ArtTimeInvestor wrote: post #47

Can 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 Te…

I mean, if after three years all we got is Mistral, it's obvious that EU is out of the current round of AI race. It might even be a positive thing. If the AI 'bubble' bursts they might end up saving tons of money and can buy idle GPUs at a discount.

Yeah and we could run kimi. Th issue is energy, we should keep building nuclear reactor and renewable to power it.

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

#129

Post by vasco » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 12:59 PM UTC

And move to the Lidl cloud?

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

#130

Post by yoavm » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 1:00 PM UTC

bluecalm wrote: post #75

202508042147 wrote: post #49

As 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 d…

>>As 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. The main reason we don't have an alternative to Visa/Mastercard duopoly is protectionism of EU countries. There are local alternatives that do pretty well (BLIK in Poland, Revolut Pay in countries where i…

> The main reason we don't have an alternative to Visa/Mastercard duopoly is protectionism of EU countries. There are local alternatives that do pretty well (BLIK in Poland, Revolut Pay in countries where it's popular) but entering more markets is like pulling teeth because EU throws regulatory obstacles at every step.

That doesn't seem to make a lot of sense? How did Visa & Mastercard manage to go through the "protectionism of EU countries" then?