back to article EU digital sovereignty: Cloud players unconvinced

Aganist the backdrop of the new European Chips Act, digital sovereignty is on the menu once more with a conference on the topic taking place last week in the European Union. But critics in the form of local cloud players seem unconvinced, with several members of the European Cloud Industrial Alliance (EUCLIDIA) saying in an …

  1. Gordon 10 Silver badge

    Talk about a day late and a dollar short - Elvis has left the country.....

    The opportunity to build a EU hyperscaler has been and gone. There is zero chance of them being competitive with Oracle and Ali let alone the big 3.

    They would be better off bribing approaching MS or AWS or GCP (please no) to set up a duplicate ownership model in the EU. License the technology from the Mothership but total network and company segregation from it. Like Gov.cloud but EU.Cloud.

    1. b0llchit Silver badge
      Meh

      Re: Talk about a day late and a dollar short - Elvis has left the country.....

      It depends on the amount of money the EU is willing to inject into throw at these European cloud companies. Throw enough money at them and they may in fact be a lot cheaper than the other side of the pond companies.

      1. codejunky Silver badge

        Re: Talk about a day late and a dollar short - Elvis has left the country.....

        @b0llchit

        "Throw enough money at them and they may in fact be a lot cheaper than the other side of the pond companies."

        Its not really cheaper if the taxpayer is paying an amount of the cost. The price will still exist whoever is paying it.

        The EU looks green eyed at the successes the US has and wonders how it can centrally plan such a success. I am waiting for tractor production figures coming from the EU under a 7 year plan.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Talk about a day late and a dollar short - Elvis has left the country.....

          I am waiting for comment production figures coming from Tufton Street under a 7 year plan.

          1. codejunky Silver badge

            Re: Talk about a day late and a dollar short - Elvis has left the country.....

            @AC

            "I am waiting for comment production figures coming from Tufton Street under a 7 year plan."

            I agree the conservatives have moved left but I dont think they have gone quite so economically socialist (do feel free to slate them for doing so anyway, I dont like their direction of travel either). Do I guess your a liberal too?

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Talk about a day late and a dollar short - Elvis has left the country.....

          >The EU looks green eyed at the successes the US has and wonders how it can centrally plan such a success.

          It knows it can achieve success with ever closer union.

          However, the UK isn't even a player, so has to resort to looking enviously overseas - mainly at the US, but also at SE.Asia - hence why some Conservatives want to entice people from Hong Kong to the UK in the belief that they will work some sort of magic and the UK will transform into Europe's Hong Kong...

          1. codejunky Silver badge
            Devil

            Re: Talk about a day late and a dollar short - Elvis has left the country.....

            @AC

            "It knows it can achieve success with ever closer union."

            Thanks for the laugh. Especially as you had to say something different to what I said, nice duck and weave.

            "hence why some Conservatives want to entice people from Hong Kong to the UK in the belief that they will work some sort of magic"

            Nothing to do with the latest actions by China and some feeling its the UK's duty to help protect the people under its former protection? I see why you post AC, but still thanks for starting my day with a laugh.

    2. Peter2

      Re: Talk about a day late and a dollar short - Elvis has left the country.....

      In order to be competitive with another cloud you'd have to be able to run things on other clouds. If the EU turned around and said that in light of the Privacy Shield Framework being found inadequate by the EU courts for transfering data to the USA that anybody sending data to the US is subject to GDPR fines then then you immediately wouldn't be able to transfer any private data abroad from the EU without risking fines of up to 10% of annual turnover per incident.

      At that point companies would have to either use local clouds or on prem, even if those options were more expensive and less capable.

      Is that likely? No. Is it impossible? Also, no.

      1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: Talk about a day late and a dollar short - Elvis has left the country.....

        I doubt it's that unlikely that any attempts to work round the issue will get past the EU courts as the stumbling block in the US remains. However, unless the court specifically says it's never going to work they'll just kick the can down the road by bringing out a new scheme to replace the old, more or less like investigative powers in the UK.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Talk about a day late and a dollar short - Elvis has left the country.....

        "Is that likely? No. Is it impossible? Also, no."

        Would it make multinational companies have to run seperate systems for anything that touched personal data? Yes

        Would that result in a significant decline in investment in the EU? Yes

        So the question is at what point is the pain (loss of investment) more than the benefits of data protection/risk of having to invest in a viable EU cloud solution? And finding a viable EU cloud solution would be a useful start...

      3. The Basis of everything is...

        Re: Talk about a day late and a dollar short - Elvis has left the country.....

        How long do you think it will take to:

        o Build out a cloud service suitable for enterprise use - ie VMs, containers, provisioning, network, DNS, storage, all the other typical cloudy services.

        o Get your new cloudy service certified for use with all the enterprise vendors big companies use

        o Get to the point people feel comfortable entrusting their corporate IT to the new EUcloud

        o Actually migrate everything that you've carefully entangled with all the AWS/Azure/Googly services

        Even if they dropped the hammer tomorrow it will take years to get everyone out of the current US-based providers, practically guarantee a trade war and quite likely tie up any new EU venture in endless intellectual property and copyright spats.

  2. Abominator

    They could like duh use OpenStack. Build and deploy their own stuff if they have scale.

  3. red19

    Same as is happening in the UK then. Home grown cloud is overlooked for the big three and it's no great surprise.

    They offer scale, and quantity has a quality all its own. Looks like gov have a front end wrapper for it now Click

  4. Robert Grant

    > the new European Chips Act

    Thing to compensate for thing that makes EU less competitive in the global economy now needs other thing to compensate for thing that makes EU less competitive in the global economy.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Why do they keep going to the US for cloud services?

    Bureaucracy and poor customer service would be a reason.

    Of the main players in Europe, like OVH or Hetzner, you either end up losing yourself in a horribly confusing and non functioning user interface, or you get hit with preposterous demands such as "send us a copy of your passport and a utility bill" (or something like that) if you want to buy storage from us.

    If Stallman was European, even he would be buying from Amazon. :(

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