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Yeah. Nobody seriously commits to it because fundamentally the idea of EU countries quickly moving off American tech services is as flawed as the idea of Americ

by mjr00 2y ago

Yeah. Nobody seriously commits to it because fundamentally the idea of EU countries quickly moving off American tech services is as flawed as the idea of American manufacturers quickly moving to production in domestic factories: * There's no existing infrastructure. OVH and Hetzner are great for smaller projects and businesses, but no serious enterprises and governments are using them, as far as I know. There's no real alternatives to Android, iOS and Windows. (Sorry, folks; not the year of the Linux desktop quite yet.) * It's expensive and time-consuming. The on-prem to cloud migration took decades for most (and is still ongoing for many!); even if a viable alternative existed right now, migrating from AWS to a domestic cloud service is a 5+ year project that distracts from other initiatives. * Compounding on the above, business leaders still largely expect this to be a one-time event, believing there's low likelihood this policy would last past 2028. You're not going to see much beyond research and planning for at least 4 years, before anyone commits to investing hundreds of millions in a massive tech migration. * Besides all that, where do you actually move to, specifically? You can say "the EU," but given the rise of populism in the region, are you confident enough to bet $500m that there won't be a "Gexit", "Frexit" or "Swexit"? Is every country in the EU going to make their own Amazon-scale cloud provider and Windows-scale operating system? Seems unrealistic. The most realistic outcome is that MS, Meta, and Alphabet all continue to push region-specific data residency for their cloud platforms and OS'es, so customers are more insulated against foreign policy changes... and charge European customers more for the trouble.

Aldipower 2y ago
At least for the cloud, one could consider the Lidl cloud called STACKIT, which targets larger businesses. Otherwise FULL ACK
- wiether 2y ago
  But do we have concrete examples of what they actually provide and how do they compare to the three majors public cloud providers? For example I can't tell if they have serverless offerings (particularly FaaS) Their public facing website is very similar to OVH or Scaleway Their Terraform provider is... not reassuring I guess from your username that you may have more intel about them, so I'm interested!
  - Aldipower 2y ago
    So, I cannot tell you more either. As I am not related to Lidl, also not Aldi, despite my nickname. :-) But I think, also the EU customers and businesses reaching for such a cloud product are also responsible to make it work. So if you are working for a bigger company, why not find a solution together with the service providers based in the EU. Otherwise we get a hen and egg problem here.
    - wiether 2y ago
      Thank you for the reply! I don't work for a big company but work for/advise multiple companies of various sizes. For clients already on a public cloud, there's no way they'll want to make a new migration if 80% is not just adapting Terraform code to the new provider. For those thinking about going on a public cloud, they are still (for now) prioritizing costs and stability; they don't want to invest in a project where they'll have to bear part of the partner's R&D costs; in this case they'd rather invest in their own on-prem/private cloud setup. I think the only thing that could really change the hen&egg problem (completely agree with you on this) is EU putting tariffs on US tech services. If the three US public clouds cost 30% more one morning, companies will start thinking about working with other partners. But then it's going to be a FFA with everyone trying to migrate to EU clouds with a very limited supply and I don't see how it could end well...
sebazzz 2y ago
> The on-prem to cloud migration took decades for most (and is still ongoing for many!) The real question whether any migration to cloud was really necessary, or even a cost saving in the end. Cloud could be considered a brain drain, in a sense.
- mjr00 2y ago
  That question has been answered; cloud has been unambiguously a huge win. There are a select few companies where their business makes more sense to use on-prem rather than cloud, but those are the exception. For most, it's outsourcing a non-core business function at a fraction of the cost. If there were a tariff-induced mass migration off AWS/GCP/Azure by enterprises, it would be to a competing cloud vendor, not back to on-prem.
  - graemep 2y ago
    > That question has been answered; cloud has been unambiguously a huge win. Evidence for that?
    - mjr00 2y ago
      Short answer: https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/AMZN/amazon/revenue https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/AMZN/amazon/revenu... Long answer: There's no movement among major businesses to move off cloud providers, only putting more stuff onto. Every "we moved our stuff back on-prem and saved tons of money!" post I see on HN is from companies with miniscule (<$10k/month) cloud spend anyway. For transparency, I have some bias since I worked at AWS. But the biggest competitors we saw while I was there were other cloud providers, not people moving back on-prem.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
graemep 2y ago
> There's no existing infrastructure. OVH and Hetzner are great for smaller projects and businesses, but no serious enterprises and governments are using them There were some French government stuff running on OVH, because some of them were knocked out by the OVH fire. There are a lot of big businesses that run traditional data centres or their own cloud. > t's expensive and time-consuming. The on-prem to cloud migration took decades for most (and is still ongoing for many!); even if a viable alternative existed right now, migrating from AWS to a domestic cloud service is a 5+ year project that distracts from other initiatives. Entirely true, partly because AWS is designed for lockin! I realise there are other issues. > Compounding on the above, business leaders still largely expect this to be a one-time event, believing there's low likelihood this policy would last past 2028. You're not going to see much beyond research and planning for at least 4 years, before anyone commits to investing hundreds of millions in a massive tech migration I would argue governments should push for this anyway. it is a weakness to rely on foreign suppliers. > Besides all that, where do you actually move to, specifically? You can say "the EU," but given the rise of populism in the region, are you confident enough to bet $500m that there won't be a "Gexit", "Frexit" or "Swexit"? Is every country in the EU going to make their own Amazon-scale cloud provider The big ones probably can. The smaller ones can band together and agree to what is shared. e.g. operators can share the software that runs them, but have data centres in each country that are controlled purely locally. > and Windows-scale operating system? The OS does not have to be per country if it does not do things like requiring cloud services for logins or built in cloud storage, or if it has those then only those bits need to be in country (location and control). For both the last you can cooperate with countries that you can deal with on a reasonably equal basis - pretty much anyone other than the two super powers.

by mjr00 2y ago

Aldipower 2y ago

At least for the cloud, one could consider the Lidl cloud called STACKIT, which targets larger businesses. Otherwise FULL ACK

wiether 2y ago
But do we have concrete examples of what they actually provide and how do they compare to the three majors public cloud providers? For example I can't tell if they have serverless offerings (particularly FaaS) Their public facing website is very similar to OVH or Scaleway Their Terraform provider is... not reassuring I guess from your username that you may have more intel about them, so I'm interested!
- Aldipower 2y ago
  So, I cannot tell you more either. As I am not related to Lidl, also not Aldi, despite my nickname. :-) But I think, also the EU customers and businesses reaching for such a cloud product are also responsible to make it work. So if you are working for a bigger company, why not find a solution together with the service providers based in the EU. Otherwise we get a hen and egg problem here.
  - wiether 2y ago
    Thank you for the reply! I don't work for a big company but work for/advise multiple companies of various sizes. For clients already on a public cloud, there's no way they'll want to make a new migration if 80% is not just adapting Terraform code to the new provider. For those thinking about going on a public cloud, they are still (for now) prioritizing costs and stability; they don't want to invest in a project where they'll have to bear part of the partner's R&D costs; in this case they'd rather invest in their own on-prem/private cloud setup. I think the only thing that could really change the hen&egg problem (completely agree with you on this) is EU putting tariffs on US tech services. If the three US public clouds cost 30% more one morning, companies will start thinking about working with other partners. But then it's going to be a FFA with everyone trying to migrate to EU clouds with a very limited supply and I don't see how it could end well...

sebazzz 2y ago

> The on-prem to cloud migration took decades for most (and is still ongoing for many!) The real question whether any migration to cloud was really necessary, or even a cost saving in the end. Cloud could be considered a brain drain, in a sense.

mjr00 2y ago
That question has been answered; cloud has been unambiguously a huge win. There are a select few companies where their business makes more sense to use on-prem rather than cloud, but those are the exception. For most, it's outsourcing a non-core business function at a fraction of the cost. If there were a tariff-induced mass migration off AWS/GCP/Azure by enterprises, it would be to a competing cloud vendor, not back to on-prem.
- graemep 2y ago
  > That question has been answered; cloud has been unambiguously a huge win. Evidence for that?
  - mjr00 2y ago
    Short answer: https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/AMZN/amazon/revenue https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/AMZN/amazon/revenu... Long answer: There's no movement among major businesses to move off cloud providers, only putting more stuff onto. Every "we moved our stuff back on-prem and saved tons of money!" post I see on HN is from companies with miniscule (<$10k/month) cloud spend anyway. For transparency, I have some bias since I worked at AWS. But the biggest competitors we saw while I was there were other cloud providers, not people moving back on-prem.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

graemep 2y ago

> There's no existing infrastructure. OVH and Hetzner are great for smaller projects and businesses, but no serious enterprises and governments are using them There were some French government stuff running on OVH, because some of them were knocked out by the OVH fire. There are a lot of big businesses that run traditional data centres or their own cloud. > t's expensive and time-consuming. The on-prem to cloud migration took decades for most (and is still ongoing for many!); even if a viable alternative existed right now, migrating from AWS to a domestic cloud service is a 5+ year project that distracts from other initiatives. Entirely true, partly because AWS is designed for lockin! I realise there are other issues. > Compounding on the above, business leaders still largely expect this to be a one-time event, believing there's low likelihood this policy would last past 2028. You're not going to see much beyond research and planning for at least 4 years, before anyone commits to investing hundreds of millions in a massive tech migration I would argue governments should push for this anyway. it is a weakness to rely on foreign suppliers. > Besides all that, where do you actually move to, specifically? You can say "the EU," but given the rise of populism in the region, are you confident enough to bet $500m that there won't be a "Gexit", "Frexit" or "Swexit"? Is every country in the EU going to make their own Amazon-scale cloud provider The big ones probably can. The smaller ones can band together and agree to what is shared. e.g. operators can share the software that runs them, but have data centres in each country that are controlled purely locally. > and Windows-scale operating system? The OS does not have to be per country if it does not do things like requiring cloud services for logins or built in cloud storage, or if it has those then only those bits need to be in country (location and control). For both the last you can cooperate with countries that you can deal with on a reasonably equal basis - pretty much anyone other than the two super powers.