zlacker

We need more like this. Europe is totally dependent on US companies for cloud computing.

>>Synaes+(OP)
As a dual US/EU national who would love to move to Europe, I, for one, welcome the increase in tech demand on that side of the pond.

>>Synaes+(OP)
Until now nobody thought it was a problem. At least not a big one. The EU made some moves to define a "cloud computing" platform for Europe, and very little people paid attention because business-wise it was very difficult to compete with US corporations that have vast amounts of money in cash and find easy to get funding.

But now there are some (small) alternatives.

LIDL has its own cloud for retail.

And I believe T-Systems sells some cloud computing for goverments based on OpenStack...

Small steps, but steps.

>>Synaes+(OP)
I don't think a cloud provider that is _just_ a cloud provider exists. All of the cloud providers I can think of (AWS, GCP, Azure, Oracle Cloud, IBM Cloud, Baidu, etc) are subsidiaries of larger corporations whose profit centers are elsewhere.

The capital requirements needed to spin up a public cloud and the services that come with that are absolutely massive. It makes me think that cloud computing, despite the gigantic profits it brings in, is not sustainable on its own.

>>nunez+NN
For what it’s worth, Amazon’s largest profit center is AWS. Likewise for Microsoft and Azure.

>>eb0la+Fn
>Until now nobody thought it was a problem.

I've seen these "EU digital sovereignty is around the corner!!" articles weekly for the past 10 years

>>Synaes+(OP)
The cost to bootstrap a sovereign cloud offering in Europe that can even begin to compare to the big ones in the US would be humongous. There would need to be a solid, multi-year incentive for a company/startup to even want to attempt it. It has to come from the top. Else force the big US clouds operating in Europe to be ready to effectively detach from their US counterparts if shit hits the fan, though this one's probably not realistic.

>>davkan+Xk2
That's the case now, yes. However, EC2 and S3 were started by using idle compute for .com, which they had boatloads of due to their size, and Windows Azure was originally meant to be an app hosting platform for .NET apps running on Windows.

The only other companies I can think of that tried being/are trying to be _just_ cloud provider are Rackspace (which has been barely hanging on as the CSPs are eating their lunch) and Hetzner (who seem to be doing okay), but both of these companies lean more towards "hosting provider" (i.e. renting compute is their business) rather than "cloud provider" (i.e. providing platforms for many use cases).

>>nunez+Qu8
Yes I agree there is no pure hosting/cloud company that comes close to the scale of the big 3 who also use their cloud infrastructure expertise and inventory to subsidize all the other parts of their businesses. Maybe it’s only possible to be reach the top if you already have all the money and infrastructure in the world, but just pointing out that for the top two cloud providers these platforms are at the core of their business and are their most profitable units.