5 ms·

Ask HN: Why are there no big cloud vendors based in Europe?

11 points by waspight 4y ago

Due to gdpr, the patriot act and such laws there should really be a demand for an eu based cloud vendor. Does it exist? And by that I mean a vendor with competitive solutions to for instance AWS.

farimani 4y ago
OVH Cloud
- night-rider 4y ago
  Also Hetzner
  - waspight 4y ago
    Do they have s3, managed k8s and such things?
    - the_biot 4y ago
      They do not, and I'll never understand why they don't. My impression is they've got plenty of growth, great execution, great prices, but they're super slow in rolling out new products. They have API-driven spinup and management of VMs, and that's just about the most modern thing they do.
      - Vardiak 4y ago
        That’s false. Both OVH and Scaleway have object storage, good public cloud infrastructure and managed K8S at very interesting prices (I don’t know about Hetzner). I use them everyday and don’t understand why people keep paying 10x that for AWS Azure or GCP.
        the_biot 4y ago
        But Hetzner is what I'm talking about.
      - julienfr112 4y ago
        Maybe that's the german way : change the product iteratively by small step. And moving from dedicated servers to full service like S3 is too big a step.
    - thiht 4y ago
      OVHcloud does. They have Open Stack Swift with S3 compatibility, and a managed K8s
- julienfr112 4y ago
  and scaleway
- Raed667 4y ago
  I love OVH, but using their console after trying out GCP feels like going back to the stone age.
night-rider 4y ago
Can’t you spin up EU AWS instances? I haven’t tried but I imagine it exists. Anything to get away from US soil and all that…
- waspight 4y ago
  Yes you can but I think in some situations it is still a problem that aws is a US based company.
aristofun 4y ago
[flagged]
- jguzmanjr 4y ago
  Care to explain??
  - night-rider 4y ago
    I think this refers to the stronger safety nets present in the EU compared to the US. The US has social security and food stamps (which work) but the EU is deemed ‘better’ at this, probably because socialism only works best on a small scale.
    - simne 4y ago
      Socialism don't works on a small scale :) I think, European slow mostly because what I said in another ans - too much competition between governments, and they must made much noticeable differences, for which could spend more taxpayers money.
- the_biot 4y ago
  This may shatter your worldview, but I must point out that Europe is not a socialist continent.
  - aristofun 4y ago
    Continent is not, bit im not so sure about the mentality of the population. Why, for instance, you would have to pay 60+% of your faang engineer salary as taxes in some countries? Do you feel any freedom to choose where your money goes (as in “free market”?) Or what would it take to fire an employee in France in comparison to US? Would you as a startup founder at this moment feel the “invisible hand” or rather some politicians’ hands who decided everything for you?
    - aristofun 4y ago
jurschreuder 4y ago
Might change in the future: "Europe witnessed the birth of 85 new tech companies with a valuation of $1 billion or more in 2021, taking the total unicorns in Europe to 132, and registering a unicorn growth rate more than twice that of the US. However, it should be noted that this does not mean that more startups became unicorns in Europe than in the US (there were 340 new unicorns in the US last year), but that the US growth rate was 124% from 2020 versus the EU growth rate of 400%, i.e. 17 new ones in 2020 and 85 in 2021. "
seekingcharlie 4y ago
Deutsche Telekom’s OTC.
everfrustrated 4y ago
Why? Because they aren't profitable and EU companies don't have access to the cheap capital that their American cousins do. Azure and GCP still bleed billions of $ despite all manner of accounting tricks (google includes Gmail in their cloud revenue!, Microsoft does something similar) So far as I know AWS is the only profitable large scale cloud service. Probably because of their first mover advantage giving them scale (customers and products offered)
simne 4y ago
They are not as big as in US, but exists. Most important, is the nature of Europe - it is densely populated, and all largest countries are separated by mountains or big water. Because of this natural divide, Europe has not unified culture, non unified business regulations, and much less space to grow. You could consider, US is 300 millions unified culture, and EU 500 millions, but divided to 3-4 most powerful cultures and tens smaller. So when in US could be one very large company, in EU will be at least 4 different sub-companies for each large culture. And unfortunately, Internet is business of largest possible scale, need large unified environment. Example, how made films in EU in 1960s. Typically, films where made by international companies, and very normal was, when in one scene heroes speak on three languages, and than made dubbing to each country, where film exported. - Hollywood that time already made direct sound tracks, without dubbing. And this was cheaper an faster. And many languages is not only such difference, there are lot others, each add some costs. Second important difference, most interest European countries are very densely populated, and land prices are high, but in least interest is not easy to make big data-center, because uncomfortable regulations. Mean, not easy to find customers in for example, France, but place dc with their data in for example, Hungary. So in Europe exists large gap for companies want to grow from small, like google at start, to big cloud, like current cloud companies.
landosaari 4y ago
EU alternatives: https://european-alternatives.eu/category/cloud-computing-platforms https://european-alternatives.eu/category/cloud-computing-pl... Note the cost of electricity Germany is the most in the world [0] compared with US prices [1]. https://www.electricrate.com/data-center/electricity-prices-by-country/ https://www.electricrate.com/data-center/electricity-prices-... [0] https://www.electricchoice.com/electricity-prices-by-state/ https://www.electricchoice.com/electricity-prices-by-state/ [1]

11 points by waspight 4y ago

Due to gdpr, the patriot act and such laws there should really be a demand for an eu based cloud vendor. Does it exist? And by that I mean a vendor with competitive solutions to for instance AWS.

farimani 4y ago

OVH Cloud

night-rider 4y ago
Also Hetzner
- waspight 4y ago
  Do they have s3, managed k8s and such things?
  - the_biot 4y ago
    They do not, and I'll never understand why they don't. My impression is they've got plenty of growth, great execution, great prices, but they're super slow in rolling out new products. They have API-driven spinup and management of VMs, and that's just about the most modern thing they do.
    - Vardiak 4y ago
      That’s false. Both OVH and Scaleway have object storage, good public cloud infrastructure and managed K8S at very interesting prices (I don’t know about Hetzner). I use them everyday and don’t understand why people keep paying 10x that for AWS Azure or GCP.
      - the_biot 4y ago
        But Hetzner is what I'm talking about.
    - julienfr112 4y ago
      Maybe that's the german way : change the product iteratively by small step. And moving from dedicated servers to full service like S3 is too big a step.
  - thiht 4y ago
    OVHcloud does. They have Open Stack Swift with S3 compatibility, and a managed K8s
julienfr112 4y ago
and scaleway
Raed667 4y ago
I love OVH, but using their console after trying out GCP feels like going back to the stone age.

night-rider 4y ago

Can’t you spin up EU AWS instances? I haven’t tried but I imagine it exists. Anything to get away from US soil and all that…

waspight 4y ago
Yes you can but I think in some situations it is still a problem that aws is a US based company.

aristofun 4y ago

[flagged]

jguzmanjr 4y ago
Care to explain??
- night-rider 4y ago
  I think this refers to the stronger safety nets present in the EU compared to the US. The US has social security and food stamps (which work) but the EU is deemed ‘better’ at this, probably because socialism only works best on a small scale.
  - simne 4y ago
    Socialism don't works on a small scale :) I think, European slow mostly because what I said in another ans - too much competition between governments, and they must made much noticeable differences, for which could spend more taxpayers money.
the_biot 4y ago
This may shatter your worldview, but I must point out that Europe is not a socialist continent.
- aristofun 4y ago
  Continent is not, bit im not so sure about the mentality of the population. Why, for instance, you would have to pay 60+% of your faang engineer salary as taxes in some countries? Do you feel any freedom to choose where your money goes (as in “free market”?) Or what would it take to fire an employee in France in comparison to US? Would you as a startup founder at this moment feel the “invisible hand” or rather some politicians’ hands who decided everything for you?
  - aristofun 4y ago

jurschreuder 4y ago

Might change in the future: "Europe witnessed the birth of 85 new tech companies with a valuation of $1 billion or more in 2021, taking the total unicorns in Europe to 132, and registering a unicorn growth rate more than twice that of the US. However, it should be noted that this does not mean that more startups became unicorns in Europe than in the US (there were 340 new unicorns in the US last year), but that the US growth rate was 124% from 2020 versus the EU growth rate of 400%, i.e. 17 new ones in 2020 and 85 in 2021. "

seekingcharlie 4y ago

Deutsche Telekom’s OTC.

everfrustrated 4y ago

Why? Because they aren't profitable and EU companies don't have access to the cheap capital that their American cousins do. Azure and GCP still bleed billions of $ despite all manner of accounting tricks (google includes Gmail in their cloud revenue!, Microsoft does something similar) So far as I know AWS is the only profitable large scale cloud service. Probably because of their first mover advantage giving them scale (customers and products offered)

simne 4y ago

They are not as big as in US, but exists. Most important, is the nature of Europe - it is densely populated, and all largest countries are separated by mountains or big water. Because of this natural divide, Europe has not unified culture, non unified business regulations, and much less space to grow. You could consider, US is 300 millions unified culture, and EU 500 millions, but divided to 3-4 most powerful cultures and tens smaller. So when in US could be one very large company, in EU will be at least 4 different sub-companies for each large culture. And unfortunately, Internet is business of largest possible scale, need large unified environment. Example, how made films in EU in 1960s. Typically, films where made by international companies, and very normal was, when in one scene heroes speak on three languages, and than made dubbing to each country, where film exported. - Hollywood that time already made direct sound tracks, without dubbing. And this was cheaper an faster. And many languages is not only such difference, there are lot others, each add some costs. Second important difference, most interest European countries are very densely populated, and land prices are high, but in least interest is not easy to make big data-center, because uncomfortable regulations. Mean, not easy to find customers in for example, France, but place dc with their data in for example, Hungary. So in Europe exists large gap for companies want to grow from small, like google at start, to big cloud, like current cloud companies.

landosaari 4y ago

EU alternatives: https://european-alternatives.eu/category/cloud-computing-platforms https://european-alternatives.eu/category/cloud-computing-pl... Note the cost of electricity Germany is the most in the world [0] compared with US prices [1]. https://www.electricrate.com/data-center/electricity-prices-by-country/ https://www.electricrate.com/data-center/electricity-prices-... [0] https://www.electricchoice.com/electricity-prices-by-state/ https://www.electricchoice.com/electricity-prices-by-state/ [1]