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> Definitely a change, because it is not something I can recall being important just a couple of years ago. I work as a consultant and freelancer across a bunc
by embedding-shape 6mo ago
> Definitely a change, because it is not something I can recall being important just a couple of years ago.
I work as a consultant and freelancer across a bunch of companies, some American but mostly European ones. Last ~8 months or so, the sentiment about "Hosting our data in EU or even our own country" has drastically changed, I don't think I've seen such a clear shift in public opinion so fast before. The amount of migrations I've helped moving data from US to EU already is higher this calendar year than all the other years of my career.
- AllanSavageDev 6mo agoEU hosting their own ops like they built the Airbus A380: Database runs in France, front end in Belgium, Operations in Spain... EU Fairness dictates they all need to get a slice of the pie so this will be interesting (and by that I mean absurdly hilarious).
- embedding-shape 6mo agoYeah, I guess we replaced globalism with Europalism, since some of the other parties who initially pushed for globalism now wants nothing to do with it anymore. Oh well, I'm looking forward to closer connections and relationships to our French and Belgian brothers and sisters :)
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- kergonath 6mo ago> Yeah, I guess we replaced globalism with Europalism, since some of the other parties who initially pushed for globalism now wants nothing to do with it anymore. That is a very myopic way of looking at it. Right-wing neoliberal parties were globalists and pro-EU for business reasons. Left-wing social-liberals were pro-EU for social and ideological reasons but were much more ambivalent about globalisation. Hard-right nationalists hate the EU but don’t see much of a problem with globalisation except when people are involved (exploiting them abroad, however, is fine as long as there is a buck to be made). If you’re a bit careful you’ll find opinions all over the place on both globalisation and the EU across the whole spectrum. Globalisation is more something that affect individual member states than a EU issue.
- libertine 6mo ago[dead]
- SlinkyOnStairs 6mo ago> EU hosting their own ops like they built the Airbus A380: > Database runs in France, front end in Belgium, Operations in Spain... You snark, but is this not EXACTLY how a sizeable majority of modern apps are made? Substitute in some random tech stacks, cloud providers, or buzzwords. Database runs in AWS, front end in Nuxt, Operations in Claude.
- Arkhaine_kupo 6mo agoIsnt that how american contracts work? You put your Headquarters in seattle, your data center in alabama, you have your dev team in SF... every state gets a slice Like gov contracts and how they are divided is basically the largest conversation in defense contracts, they give more of a shit who will make the nails for a tank than the security parameters of the crew members
- soopypoos 6mo agotank nails are so expensive though
- thesquandered 6mo agoAn entire continent's sentiment shifting to pull market share away from your team is nothing to snark at, regardless of whether the first iteration works perfectly out of the box. I can guarantee you someone in Europe is smart enough to eventually get their needs sorted.
- WJW 6mo agoLike NASA rockets don't have components whose manufacture is very carefully distributed over all US states just to keep the senators happy. In any case, there are plenty of EU giants (ASML, SAP, Siemens, Alstom, Rheinmetall, etc) that are rather concentrated geographically speaking. EU fairness is more a government agency distribution thing, not for private companies.
- raincole 6mo agoI think we're going to witness a very inefficient system getting brought to work by policies alone. And I'm not even bashing EU. The closest example still working today is probably the US's Jones Act.
- riccardomc 6mo agoBetter than Boeing, I guess...
- elygre 6mo agoThe A380 is a fantastic airplane to ride, so if that is the end result I’m a fan!
- kergonath 6mo ago> Database runs in France, front end in Belgium, Operations in Spain... How is that worse than headquarters in New York, incorporation in Delaware, operations in California, and datacenters in Texas?
- j_maffe 6mo agoWell Airbus is doing much better than Boeing so I'm not sure what's the problem.
- 2muchcoffeeman 6mo agoSurely there would have been mumblings in certain sectors of the EU since the first Trump administration? It’s just that they started to execute now?
- embedding-shape 6mo agoThere been mumblings for as long as I've been a developer, I remember hearing about "EU data independence" first when the ePrivacy Directive came around, which must have been multiple decades ago at this point. But yeah, in recent times the sentiment became more urgent. If I were to guess, with zero data in front of me and just judging by what I remember, I think the sentiment really changed first with the ICC blockade that happened last year, then it got really fueled on by the US threats to Greenland's sovereignty, I think that's when organizations and people really got stressed out about moving ASAP.
- spockz 6mo agoAround me, the threat to Greenland is what kicked the plans from “okay what mitigations should we envision?” to “alright, let’s go as far to actually run shadow ops to get acquainted with …” to full on move after the invasion.
- pjc50 6mo agoYes, that was the thing that set off all the alarms. Trump 1 said a lot of things but had not completed the Hungary-fication of the US. Trump 1 was also before the Ukraine war!
- vanschelven 6mo agoTrump may genuinely end up being the best salesman European hosting companies ever had. I run one of the tools mentioned in this post (Bugsink) and I literally had an uptick of Danish people/companies (specifically) reaching out to me after Davos.
- embedding-shape 6mo agoAs someone who've basically started being known as "The guy who helps you move data out of US to Europe" in certain circles, I'm not complaining either :)
- blululu 6mo agoOut of curiosity how much of this is a manifestation of the utility of LLMs? I get the current political impetus right now but also the barrier for swapping out an infra stack was also much higher 2 years ago. From my own projects major swaps are now relatively trivial which means that vendor lock in is weak.
- ambicapter 6mo agoHow do LLMs help with the mechanics of switching infrastructure stacks? Does writing code faster make infrastructure swap easier?
- embedding-shape 6mo agoBesides some companies that were deep into the weeds of AWS and been pushed to enable and use every single AWS service by their reps, I don't think it's much harder/easier today than it was two years ago. Sure, LLMs help a bit with the actual typing, but the hard part is still planning, alignment and actual execution, all which are best done by humans talking and working with other humans. I don't think we're in the days of "Hey Codex migrate our AWS stack 100% to Hetzner VPS stat" yet, without issues along the way. Wouldn't claim it's impossible either, but again the easy parts were already easy, and the hard parts are still hard.
- ghaff 6mo agoArchitecting to make portability easier should absolutely be a thing. But people in the weeds of a specific public cloud provider today will absolutely need to make tradeoffs between getting to a position where they can be more portable and devoting those resources to other things.
- embedding-shape 6mo ago> Architecting to make portability easier should absolutely be a thing. It is, but it's really hard to make the right trade-offs. Usually I'd start by basically making a list of what could potentially be done to make it easier, check lightly how hard each one of those will be, then sit down with stakeholders and figure out the balance between how fast they want to move, and how risky they want the migration to be. Some opts for less safeguards and moving sooner, others for absolutely less risk but it takes the time it takes.
- weberer 6mo ago>I don't think I've seen such a clear shift in public opinion so fast before Its not about public opinion, but rather data sovereignty requirements. Certain types of data must be processed within servers located in the EU, regardless of where the company's HQ is. That's why you see most SaaS platforms nowadays offer a EU-only version.
- riccardomc 6mo agoIt is definitely also about public opinion and it is going to be translated into laws soon enough (i.e. governments mandate data sovereignty). Recent erratic policies are having a profound effect on perception of US companies. It has been brewing for a while. https://www.euronews.com/next/2025/02/27/is-overreliance-on-us-big-tech-a-threat-to-europe-the-netherlands-may-soon-find-out https://www.euronews.com/next/2025/02/27/is-overreliance-on-...
- weberer 6mo ago>it is going to be translated into laws soon enough (i.e. governments mandate data sovereignty) The laws are already there. That's my point.
- close04 6mo agoThere are no laws that force companies to store all (generic) data in Europe. If there were then the companies asking about migrations just now would already be in breach. You’re probably thinking of PII (GDPR/EUDPR) and even there there are plenty of loopholes, creative interpretations, and “privacy shields”. The push for sovereignty doesn’t just come from regulators, it comes from the companies themselves who lost trust in the US, and also from European providers who jumped on the opportunity to make a killing.
- tpm 6mo agoNot generic data, no. But there are laws for government data afaik.
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- rcarr 6mo agoHow many in your estimation are moving to EU owned vs just EU hosted?
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- NicoJuicy 6mo agoIf you want to sell in Europe now or in the future to any governement ( city, provence, country, ... ). It means EU sovereign cloud. That's literally the primary concern.
- anakaine 6mo agoIn Australia we have legislated it on multiple places, and it has become tied to things like privacy legislation and for that which isnt privacy related we defer to industry best practice - which is often discussed and published by national agencies in the tech and security space, which of course turns into "must do" actions by every government CISO and CDO/CIO. It has been a headache for our vendors.