4 ms·

The tricky thing about these services is that they often cannot compete on price or on capability. The scale and mature feature sets of US based cloud providers

The tricky thing about these services is that they often cannot compete on price or on capability. The scale and mature feature sets of US based cloud providers outweigh the benefits of keeping it within European ownership for most commercial organizations. For Europe to truly compete, they shouldn't copy IaaS models, but come up with new innovative PaaS models in yet to develop markets, such as XR or internet-decentralization. Those markets provide a chance to go in front at an early stage and with enough dedication of both the EU government and the European business community, this can be a start to differentiate itself from the US and China.

Tenoke 2y ago
Hetzner has been the cheapest big option when you just want raw servers for at least a decade, and e.g. Scaleway is pretty similar in price to US based providers.
- flessner 2y ago
  I have used both of them in the past, pricing is indeed very competitive - there are very few providers coming close to Hetzner pricing on dedicated servers. There's also OVH, they have plenty of global regions, but I haven't used them yet.
- badestrand 2y ago
  Hetzner half-heartetly started to offer database hosting as well but they need a lot more services and present them on eye level with the servers. I a am huge Hetzner fan and waiting for years already for them to expand their offering.
  - dumbledoren 2y ago
    Huh? Database hosting? I dont see it anywhere in Hetzner offerings?
  - kakoni 2y ago
    I guess at this point you mean their recent object storage offering? https://www.hetzner.com/storage/object-storage/ https://www.hetzner.com/storage/object-storage/
- rbanffy 2y ago
  UpCloud also seems quite cheap - 1 vCPU and 1GB of RAM, 10GB disk for €3/month and €4.5 for 20GB disk.
mvc 2y ago
> The scale and mature feature sets of US based cloud providers outweigh the benefits of keeping it within European ownership for most commercial organizations. That's what companies thought about manufacturing in China. But that was before they found out the costs of corruption and loss of trade secrets. If you're a fantastically succesfuly European company, what's to stop Trump (or any future president) just deciding you're too big and need to be sold to "an american investor"? It is high time for companies and banks to invest only where democracy thrives because when you invest where it doesn't, your investment simply ends up being controlled by gangsters. This might benefit you for a while. But eventually, it won't.
- genewitch 2y ago
  Do you think the United States isn't a democracy? I mean, it isn't. It's a constitutional republic, but answer the question.
  - mrpgraae 2y ago
    This is like saying that a hamster isn't a mammal because it's a rodent.
    - genewitch 2y ago
      a true democracy would be a 1:1 vote, each person gets 1 vote, and that is what matters for everything. we have a representative democracy, but our country operates as a constitutional republic. words have meanings. so what i am asking is, even if you take democracy to mean whatever you think it means, is the US not a democracy? It is really hard to see what your point was, because i asked if they thought the US was not a democracy, and here you are saying it is, so what are you trying to say? you agree with me, the US is a democracy, right?
      - mrpgraae 2y ago
        Yes, words have meanings. What you call "true democracy" is what is usually referred to as direct democracy. You seem to be implying that a representative democracy is not a democracy. It is, it's just a different form than direct democracy. In your previous post you said that the US is not a democracy, but a constitutional republic. Now you say that the US has a representative democracy, but operates as a constitutional republic, so I'm not sure what you mean anymore? You seem to agree that a constitutional republic can also be a democracy. To answer your question, I agree with you the US is a democracy. The parent comment did not say that the US is not a democracy, it said that "companies and banks should invest only where democracy thrives". I take that to mean that this user believes that democracy is not currently thriving in the US, which I would agree with.
sanxiyn 2y ago
Scaleway is pretty competitive.
rbanffy 2y ago
> for most commercial organizations The overwhelming majority of commercial organizations don't even have a registered domain. They pass well under our radars because they'd never hire any of us for help. Last one who asked me, a fertility clinic, wanted a blog, so I registered a domain for them, set up Google services (back then it was free for their org size - something like 5 people), Wordpress, their payment accounts, and that was it. Apart from e-mail and shared documents, they had zero cloud presence. If they wanted to self-host their blog (something I would discourage) they'd need nothing more than a single tiny instance behind Cloudflare.
Puts 2y ago
"for most commercial organizations" Most commercial organizations are not "internet" companies. They can run their business on a single VPS. Even e-commerce sites with several million euro turnover can run their Magento instance on a single VPS. Or industries manufacturing things can still run their inventory software or ERP stuff on some cheap VPS.

Tenoke 2y ago

Hetzner has been the cheapest big option when you just want raw servers for at least a decade, and e.g. Scaleway is pretty similar in price to US based providers.

flessner 2y ago
I have used both of them in the past, pricing is indeed very competitive - there are very few providers coming close to Hetzner pricing on dedicated servers. There's also OVH, they have plenty of global regions, but I haven't used them yet.
badestrand 2y ago
Hetzner half-heartetly started to offer database hosting as well but they need a lot more services and present them on eye level with the servers. I a am huge Hetzner fan and waiting for years already for them to expand their offering.
- dumbledoren 2y ago
  Huh? Database hosting? I dont see it anywhere in Hetzner offerings?
- kakoni 2y ago
  I guess at this point you mean their recent object storage offering? https://www.hetzner.com/storage/object-storage/ https://www.hetzner.com/storage/object-storage/
rbanffy 2y ago
UpCloud also seems quite cheap - 1 vCPU and 1GB of RAM, 10GB disk for €3/month and €4.5 for 20GB disk.

mvc 2y ago

> The scale and mature feature sets of US based cloud providers outweigh the benefits of keeping it within European ownership for most commercial organizations. That's what companies thought about manufacturing in China. But that was before they found out the costs of corruption and loss of trade secrets. If you're a fantastically succesfuly European company, what's to stop Trump (or any future president) just deciding you're too big and need to be sold to "an american investor"? It is high time for companies and banks to invest only where democracy thrives because when you invest where it doesn't, your investment simply ends up being controlled by gangsters. This might benefit you for a while. But eventually, it won't.

genewitch 2y ago
Do you think the United States isn't a democracy? I mean, it isn't. It's a constitutional republic, but answer the question.
- mrpgraae 2y ago
  This is like saying that a hamster isn't a mammal because it's a rodent.
  - genewitch 2y ago
    a true democracy would be a 1:1 vote, each person gets 1 vote, and that is what matters for everything. we have a representative democracy, but our country operates as a constitutional republic. words have meanings. so what i am asking is, even if you take democracy to mean whatever you think it means, is the US not a democracy? It is really hard to see what your point was, because i asked if they thought the US was not a democracy, and here you are saying it is, so what are you trying to say? you agree with me, the US is a democracy, right?
    - mrpgraae 2y ago
      Yes, words have meanings. What you call "true democracy" is what is usually referred to as direct democracy. You seem to be implying that a representative democracy is not a democracy. It is, it's just a different form than direct democracy. In your previous post you said that the US is not a democracy, but a constitutional republic. Now you say that the US has a representative democracy, but operates as a constitutional republic, so I'm not sure what you mean anymore? You seem to agree that a constitutional republic can also be a democracy. To answer your question, I agree with you the US is a democracy. The parent comment did not say that the US is not a democracy, it said that "companies and banks should invest only where democracy thrives". I take that to mean that this user believes that democracy is not currently thriving in the US, which I would agree with.

sanxiyn 2y ago

Scaleway is pretty competitive.

rbanffy 2y ago

> for most commercial organizations The overwhelming majority of commercial organizations don't even have a registered domain. They pass well under our radars because they'd never hire any of us for help. Last one who asked me, a fertility clinic, wanted a blog, so I registered a domain for them, set up Google services (back then it was free for their org size - something like 5 people), Wordpress, their payment accounts, and that was it. Apart from e-mail and shared documents, they had zero cloud presence. If they wanted to self-host their blog (something I would discourage) they'd need nothing more than a single tiny instance behind Cloudflare.

Puts 2y ago

"for most commercial organizations" Most commercial organizations are not "internet" companies. They can run their business on a single VPS. Even e-commerce sites with several million euro turnover can run their Magento instance on a single VPS. Or industries manufacturing things can still run their inventory software or ERP stuff on some cheap VPS.