Europe's Self Inflicted Cloud Crisis - Bert Hubert's writings

Europe's Self Inflicted Cloud Crisis The short version For decades, governments and organizations could run services based on servers we actually owned. These days, we’ve allowed the IT world to convince us no computing is possible outside of US-style clouds, for which we have no European equivalents. And because of this conviction, we are now moving our most precious data and most critical services to US controlled servers . Yet most of European government software still runs on locally owned systems. Apparently it can be done! Weirdly, these days we even procure basic computing services exclusively from the US, even services that are widely available from European providers . It is likely never a great idea to base governments on proprietary cloud services , let alone ones under legal control of a rapidly decaying democracy . Given that most government (and other vital) services still run without US cloud support, let us relearn how we did that, and use those skills to maintain sovereignty from where we are. Because we’ve done that for decades, and we can continue to do so, if only we stop to take a look at what is possible with what we have here. This will allow us to not hand over our governments and societies to US control, even though we were previously sold the idea that this is the only possible action. And meanwhile, by doing business in Europe, our local clouds could offer more of the services that are now exclusively available from the US. (I’m fond of actual industry initiatives like EuroStack ). But do know that without policy action, the IT world will continue to insist only US clouds can deliver what they need. Hence the need for strong policies to base vital services on technologies that are available here, today, even as we stimulate the development of European cloud services . This article is part of a series of posts on (European) cloud challenges . The series provides a lot of important context on what follows. The full story I try to stay positive about Europe’s dire cloud situation, but sometimes I wonder what we are doing to ourselves. In short, almost all newly deployed computer systems in Europe are either based directly on American clouds, or are delivered “as a service” by companies who in turn are also all exclusively based on non-European clouds . The story is that we don’t have any real cloud providers in Europe, and by some definitions this is true . We do however have loads of places where you can rent excellent servers, storage and network bandwidth. This is the “wood” out of which you can build services. But if you want to base your services on ready made components (furniture) , there are not a lot of options here. Meanwhile, if you assemble your services out of such (American) pre-made components , you are tying yourself indefinitely to specific providers . And it is hugely expensive too. It is not all roses...

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