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I work in a sector with a requirement to keep data out of the US. It is VERY hard to find providers who can promise not to do this. Even when servers exist in t

I work in a sector with a requirement to keep data out of the US. It is VERY hard to find providers who can promise not to do this. Even when servers exist in the EU, many provider's contracts have clauses that allow transfer to the US, as they have staff there who may access the data. I can see company legal departments taking this ruling to prohibit transfers, even with a DPA in place, and causing havoc around the EU.

mytailorisrich 6y ago
The EU depends too much on the US in this area. Hopefully this will force more independence and provide a boost to the European providers.
- sam_lowry_ 6y ago
  Which area? Hetzner, Leaseweb, OVH and dozens of smaller hosting providers can fill the needs. The only thing US hosting providers have is marketing and easy money.
  - corty 6y ago
    Hosted Microsoft products mostly, which is what tons of smaller companies want from "the cloud". And some AWS workalike, which usually means AWS, because the stackoverflow answer they found doesn't tell them about the rest.
    - nix23 6y ago
      Haha you are so right!! That i think is the biggest problem with Europe, Microsoft an Apple is just everywhere...probably even more Windows installations on servers than the US.
  - arpinum 6y ago
    Managed service offerings are the main difficulty. Bare servers aren't a problem.
dgellow 6y ago
I worked on fintech projects in Europe, with German banks as our main clients. Their requirements went as far as refusing any service that would have their support teams (or part of it) located in the US. It was quite challenging to fulfill their demands, and increased the development and maintenance cost by A LOT, but definitely possible. And once you have a working system and solutions in place that becomes a quite good sale argument. And yes, the EU is really lacking providers that can follow those requirements. At some point Microsoft had a German cloud completely distinct from their other offering and managed by Telekom, but they stopped a few years ago (and it wasn't really in a production ready state IMHO...).
- nix23 6y ago
  >I worked on fintech projects in Europe I don't see the problem, buy HP Enterprise Hardware (Support is based in Czech Republic), install Suse for example (but not RedHat), ask a Data-center of your wish, place your Hardware there make your own 'cloud'...profit?
  - Sebb767 6y ago
    I don't know how much access they have, but SUSE has quite a few people working from the US.
    - nix23 6y ago
      Yes but HQ is in Nürnberg Germany, and so is the DPO: https://www.suse.com/de-de/company/legal/ https://www.suse.com/de-de/company/legal/ Its not about where some people work, it's what they do under witch legality, so a US citizen working in Germany or for German Customers "could" be a problem.
      - Sebb767 6y ago
        Thanks for the clarification!
      - raverbashing 6y ago
krageon 6y ago
It's easy to do, just don't do business with the US at all. Any company that touches it is tainted and should therefore not be trusted. I work in a sector with a similar requirement and it really hasn't been difficult to comply with this requirement, given that you keep this in mind.
- Silhouette 6y ago
  It's easy to do, just don't do business with the US at all. Less easy if you need to, for example, accept payment by credit card. Even if some of the businesses along the way are based wherever you are, the major card networks are all headquartered in the US. It would be great if the international community could get its act together on an alternative and render the deeply flawed card payments industry obsolete, but the fact is that right now cards are the only game in town for a lot of situations.
  - traceroute66 6y ago
    And SWIFT. Any time you're doing a non-SEPA, non-domestic bank transfer, likelyhood is the payment data is seen by the US.
  - vinay427 6y ago
    > render the deeply flawed card payments industry obsolete Honest question: from a consumer perspective, what is deeply flawed about it? I realize this isn't available everywhere, but with my cards I can make payments in virtually any country without ever having to deal with local currencies, currency conversion fees, bank account overdrafts, or having the physical card with me as I use my phone for 90% of transactions where I live. All this while getting 2-5% back on every purchase and (if I want to pay an annual fee and deal with more cards) a whole slew of travel benefits and free flights every year or so.
    - toyg 6y ago
      > what is deeply flawed about it? US don't like someone, like Wikileaks? Card processors block all payments to them, so you consumer cannot get your money to them. US want to profile all your transactions, to figure out where you eat, where you sleep, and what you do? They get all the data and you'll never even know. Obviously this is not a problem, as long as you stay on good terms with US interests. The minute you become a target (which might simply be because you work at a competitor of a "strategic" US business), it's not so great, to put it mildly.
throwaway9d0291 6y ago
Providers of what? SaaS or servers? As far as I know, none of the budget server providers like OVH, Hetzner and Online.net/Scaleway have a US presence.
- acejam 6y ago
  OVH has two datacenters in the US now: https://us.ovhcloud.com/ https://us.ovhcloud.com/
  - slim 6y ago
    OVH lets you chose the location of your servers even in the most basic offers.
rst 6y ago
FWIW, this may also mean avoiding US companies altogether -- the CLOUD act (hey, I don't come up with these names...) requires them to surrender data to US authorities on subpoena, even if it's hosted on facilities they own outside US territorial boundaries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act
michaelbuckbee 6y ago
How do you consider transient data or CDNs like Cloudfront/Cloudflare?

mytailorisrich 6y ago

The EU depends too much on the US in this area. Hopefully this will force more independence and provide a boost to the European providers.

sam_lowry_ 6y ago
Which area? Hetzner, Leaseweb, OVH and dozens of smaller hosting providers can fill the needs. The only thing US hosting providers have is marketing and easy money.
- corty 6y ago
  Hosted Microsoft products mostly, which is what tons of smaller companies want from "the cloud". And some AWS workalike, which usually means AWS, because the stackoverflow answer they found doesn't tell them about the rest.
  - nix23 6y ago
    Haha you are so right!! That i think is the biggest problem with Europe, Microsoft an Apple is just everywhere...probably even more Windows installations on servers than the US.
- arpinum 6y ago
  Managed service offerings are the main difficulty. Bare servers aren't a problem.

dgellow 6y ago

I worked on fintech projects in Europe, with German banks as our main clients. Their requirements went as far as refusing any service that would have their support teams (or part of it) located in the US. It was quite challenging to fulfill their demands, and increased the development and maintenance cost by A LOT, but definitely possible. And once you have a working system and solutions in place that becomes a quite good sale argument. And yes, the EU is really lacking providers that can follow those requirements. At some point Microsoft had a German cloud completely distinct from their other offering and managed by Telekom, but they stopped a few years ago (and it wasn't really in a production ready state IMHO...).

nix23 6y ago
>I worked on fintech projects in Europe I don't see the problem, buy HP Enterprise Hardware (Support is based in Czech Republic), install Suse for example (but not RedHat), ask a Data-center of your wish, place your Hardware there make your own 'cloud'...profit?
- Sebb767 6y ago
  I don't know how much access they have, but SUSE has quite a few people working from the US.
  - nix23 6y ago
    Yes but HQ is in Nürnberg Germany, and so is the DPO: https://www.suse.com/de-de/company/legal/ https://www.suse.com/de-de/company/legal/ Its not about where some people work, it's what they do under witch legality, so a US citizen working in Germany or for German Customers "could" be a problem.
    - Sebb767 6y ago
      Thanks for the clarification!
    - raverbashing 6y ago

krageon 6y ago

It's easy to do, just don't do business with the US at all. Any company that touches it is tainted and should therefore not be trusted. I work in a sector with a similar requirement and it really hasn't been difficult to comply with this requirement, given that you keep this in mind.

Silhouette 6y ago
It's easy to do, just don't do business with the US at all. Less easy if you need to, for example, accept payment by credit card. Even if some of the businesses along the way are based wherever you are, the major card networks are all headquartered in the US. It would be great if the international community could get its act together on an alternative and render the deeply flawed card payments industry obsolete, but the fact is that right now cards are the only game in town for a lot of situations.
- traceroute66 6y ago
  And SWIFT. Any time you're doing a non-SEPA, non-domestic bank transfer, likelyhood is the payment data is seen by the US.
- vinay427 6y ago
  > render the deeply flawed card payments industry obsolete Honest question: from a consumer perspective, what is deeply flawed about it? I realize this isn't available everywhere, but with my cards I can make payments in virtually any country without ever having to deal with local currencies, currency conversion fees, bank account overdrafts, or having the physical card with me as I use my phone for 90% of transactions where I live. All this while getting 2-5% back on every purchase and (if I want to pay an annual fee and deal with more cards) a whole slew of travel benefits and free flights every year or so.
  - toyg 6y ago
    > what is deeply flawed about it? US don't like someone, like Wikileaks? Card processors block all payments to them, so you consumer cannot get your money to them. US want to profile all your transactions, to figure out where you eat, where you sleep, and what you do? They get all the data and you'll never even know. Obviously this is not a problem, as long as you stay on good terms with US interests. The minute you become a target (which might simply be because you work at a competitor of a "strategic" US business), it's not so great, to put it mildly.

throwaway9d0291 6y ago

Providers of what? SaaS or servers? As far as I know, none of the budget server providers like OVH, Hetzner and Online.net/Scaleway have a US presence.

acejam 6y ago
OVH has two datacenters in the US now: https://us.ovhcloud.com/ https://us.ovhcloud.com/
- slim 6y ago
  OVH lets you chose the location of your servers even in the most basic offers.

rst 6y ago

FWIW, this may also mean avoiding US companies altogether -- the CLOUD act (hey, I don't come up with these names...) requires them to surrender data to US authorities on subpoena, even if it's hosted on facilities they own outside US territorial boundaries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act

michaelbuckbee 6y ago

How do you consider transient data or CDNs like Cloudfront/Cloudflare?