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I am Danish, working with IT in the private sector, but with regular contact to the public sector. I can assure you that there is plenty of other agencies, min
by flexie 7mo ago
I am Danish, working with IT in the private sector, but with regular contact to the public sector.
I can assure you that there is plenty of other agencies, ministries, municipalities, private companies etc. in both Denmark and other European countries looking into switching to non-American software.
"Data sovereignty" is now an important parameter when chosing supplier. Everybody asks about it it. Everybody plans around it.
Although the weaning off will take many years, and although European companies and governments will probably never be entirely without American software, and why should they, the American dominance will disappear, little by little. For better or worse, the American Century is coming to an end, also in IT.
- esafak 7mo agoWhat counts as data sovereignty in your book? Are the sovereign clouds of AWS, MS, Google acceptable? If not, who are your preferred providers?
- foobarian 7mo agoShould we discuss DNS root servers at some point too?
- koalacongregate 7mo agoI've had this thought too - of the 13 root servers, 10 are US or US-based companies. The only exceptions are Netnod (Sweden), RIPE NCC (Netherlands), WIDE Project (Japan). Even ICANN and Internet Systems Consortium are US-based non-profits... How do you even mitigate risk in this case?
- esafak 7mo agoLooks like a business opportunity.
- j16sdiz 7mo agoChina do root server mirrors: https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1156025.shtml https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1156025.shtml
- brunoborges 7mo agoHow does one start a Root DNS business?
- ggm 7mo agoRun local root. Rootservers are not essential. It's in ietf draft discussion now as 4 documents but already works and just has to be turned on. If you want to change pace, ask your dns sw provider to turn on local root by default. (One of the things being defined is how to get a root zone trustably out of band using the new ZONEMD checksum) A bigger question might be why there are no ICANN HSM outside the USA to generate root zone signings. ICANN has offices in Geneva and Singapore, it would not be hard to find secure DC locations for the signing ceremonies.
- dijit 7mo agoThey're largely not unless you are looking to appease your superiors. OVH, Telecity, Hezner, Bahnhof, Tele2 etc;etc;etc;etc;etc; are all valid suppliers without the need to buy from hyperscalers. I think what tends to work though is the idea that someone in redmond can't arbitrarily decide to shut you down as an individual or exert pressure. So it goes in order of importance: A) Can we buy the software and use it in perpetuity B) If we can't buy the software in perpetuity, do we at least control who has access to the software and our data C) If we can't control who has access to the data then can we at least ensure we always have access to it? D) If we can't ensure we have access to our own data then what are we even doing here? Depending on where you fall on this line (which is a decision each government must make) you'll have to claw back something because right now we're all on D.
- delfinom 7mo agoThe US passed the CLOUD Act which subject all those sovereign clouds run by US companies completely subject to US spying and hijack. Those offerings are garbage for anyone outside the US.
- beached_whale 7mo agoCountries hosting the data centres can make it illegal to allow access from outside their area/EU... or specifically to US entities along with making it illegal to move any data out without customer/local gov approval... This isn't rocket science. The company cannot do business if it doesn't follow the law. There are laws like this in places already. The company's local subsidiary tells the American company to politely pound sand and the American company says sorry, we tried, but do not have the capability to do as asked.
- edwinjm 7mo agoAn American company will always follow US law, no matter the local laws.
- beached_whale 7mo agoIt isn't usually an American company doing the local operations, but a local subsidiary. Like Walmart Canada telling Walmart corporate to pound sand in the 1990's over Cuban pajamas. It's illegal for Canadian companies to participate in the US embargo of Cuba. This is all well within the realm of what governments can and do regulate. Want to do business in a country with their laws or not is the choice.
- dijit 7mo agoCanadian companies can't use Cloud providers at all then? I'm incredulous about that. Google, AWS & Microsoft all nullroute the countries of Cuba, Iran and North Korea. Google also nullroutes Crimea. So by using a cloud provider, you are participating in the embargo of Cuba.
- Razengan 7mo ago> If not, who are your preferred providers? Can we have fully decentralized mesh networking yet? I love how some hyper-sci-fi settings have the concept of a "datasphere" (analogous to atmosphere): an actual physical cloud of ubiquitous nanorobots that provide connectivity, storage and computation. Wouldn't that also be ideal for AI too the way it's shaping up to be? Any device anywhere would just need to connect to a signal "neuron" of the global brain (possibly becoming a neuron itself) and it should theoretically be able to fetch anything.
- xeonmc 7mo agoMeh, best I could do is an atmosphere controlled by an American PBC.
- esafak 7mo agoDealing with the patchwork of lesser-known infra providers in the EU is work enough. You want to live life on hard mode!
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- bombcar 7mo agoIf everyone started doing it, it would get easier and easier. There's no inherent reason why the various AWS services shouldn't be completely replaceable with similar services from other vendors on a whim.
- amarant 7mo agoFirst we gotta migrate everybody to IPv6, then we can start talking.
- kakoni 7mo agoThere are no such thing as sovereign AWS/Google cloud in Europe. Marketing-wise maybe.
- gizzlon 7mo ago> "Data sovereignty" is now an important parameter when chosing supplier. I hope you're right! I'm a backend dev and engineer, and I would love to specialize in helping companies off US cloud. Haven't found a lot of interest here in Norway so far..
- prerok 7mo agoIn my experience, companies are perfectly happy with US companies, as long as the data doesn't leave Europe. This means we have to prove we only store data in European datacenters. I guess that's fine for now, but it would be better if we could get European alternatives to AWS or GCP.
- JuniperMesos 7mo agoAnd why wouldn't this European equivalent do something that a lot of people in Europe dislike too, in the future? The entire model of large cloud companies is bad.
- taikahessu 7mo agoThat's a different risk profile. Companies are governed by local laws, usually, and currently, that works here in Europe.
- gizzlon 7mo agoThere are lots of alternatives in Europe, just a little different, and smaller than the big 3 > companies are perfectly happy with US companies, as long as the data doesn't leave Europe I think it's pretty clear they can not guarantee that, see the CLOUD act. Also, they could shut you out or turn your whole business off if you, or your country, offends the orange fuckhead
- aucisson_masque 7mo agoUSA companies are subject to us laws, so any data will never be safe. Companies can be gagged, forced to seal their customer data and forced to lie about it, by law !
- mfru 7mo agoSecond that, even though it seems that there is nothing happening yet, many companies and government agencies in all of Europe are aware of their hard Microsoft dependency and are looking / coordinating to leave. Same with Atlassian Confluence / Jira. (Source: Working in a state owend company in a EU member country)
- trimethylpurine 7mo agoEveryone in the American IT world has been trying to leave Microsoft and Google for decades. In that case, the problem isn't IT push, it's that users refuse to learn new software. I can guess it's the same in Europe. It's maybe harder in Europe, because you also have fragmentation. For example, Californians are fine using software from New York. Same, same. But Germany prefers to use German software, so far. This makes it even harder, I would guess, for EU developers to establish a thriving standard.
- lenkite 7mo agoI really hope the EU is serious about this and doesn't change its mind with the next American administration who offers hugs and kisses.