This is something we need. Europe relies way too much on US companies for hosting critical apps in cloud.
In large cloud environments it's about who controls the data, not the physical location. Gigabytes of data can be transferred in seconds to other side of the world. With a flip of a switch it can be totally erased or made inaccessible even to people with physical access to the servers.
If you want to compete you must also invest in associated PaaS and SaaS-services supported by a development framework to code and integrate it all. As mentioned, getting an IaaS product is not a problem now, it's about getting the developers onboard.
> Its not just cloud. There is a lot of reliance on mobile OSes too
> If you want to compete you must also invest in associated PaaS and SaaS-services supported by a development framework to code and integrate it all.
People have got to start somewhere, and they can't really take shortcuts. Messages of the type "you need to build all the spectrum of services available on big US brands ovenight" aren't really useful.
Is 20b euro enough to be a real alternative? Just a question. The thing with managed services in customer infra is interesting… but I am afraid it is motivated by the fact that many customers are not interested in paying SAP Cloud over their currently working SAP on premise setup. Let’s also keep in mind this is the company that has rarely embraced open protocols, built lots of proprietary stuff (abap…) and rarely cares about good APIs. How they should build a proper PaaS, with what skills, culture, know how, should be the question.
StackIT is Germanys best shot at a sovereign cloud currently. Basically a fork of OpenStack.
I very much doubt SAP has the competence to replicate this. I'll also bet those unnamed open-source technologies are mostly sprinkled on top of proprietary Azure tech, like the rest of their infrastructure.
Hypothetically, if the AI is indeed able to improve efficiency Europe should be able to replicate the US IT efforts at the fraction of the original cost. Not only that but we already know what works, so no cost for the dead ends too.
A bit like SpaceX doing rocketry with modern CAD and computing power. It’s much cheaper and faster iteration from what NASA had to deal with.
The problem is, the European mindset towards software. Maybe Americans doing it in Europe can have much greater chance.
Realistically all the European mini-clouds like OVH, Scaleway, Hetzner, etc should collaborate and field some pan-European offering, similar to the American/Chinese mega clouds. And EU Commission, or whatever, should invest in the name of strategic competition.
As a european I dont believe in European anything. I worked for European scale-ups and they are all bunch of nationalists that primarily succeed in their primary country and then fail to expand in any other country because they meet the local alternative.
The best market to expand besides your own Euro-country is the US but tthen when you enter that market you are too small of a fish to do anything.
There is no such thing as european companies. It's german companies, french companies all mainly focused on their main markets.
Not gonna work. Even if they spend a 100 billion Euro. SAP isn't just a set of products; it's a cult, a mindset. A very narrow-minded and hyper-bureaucratic mindset. SAP is organically and systemically incapable of producing something competitive to AWS or GCP or even Azure. Especially not if you take into consideration that Amazon and Google will continue to adapt and evolve as well. SAP is a cancerous technology step by step eating its host. It's like a tick that will draw blood from a company until it spawns more ticks continuing the cycle. It's the digital equivalent to syphilis or herpes - highly contagious and eventually infesting the brain of everybody working with it for too long. It turns erstwhile well-intentioned humans into SAP-minded caricatures of a software zombie.
1. I find it hard to call this a sovereign cloud. This is still Azure - albeit with the crown jewels cut out - in a different dress. Did they verify there is nothing inside that Azure stack enabling calls home?
2. SAP itself is not sovereign, they're a MS shop.
3. They are no fast movers, they move short-term through acquisitions only.
4. Change is not a thing you would associate with SAP
5. A company that bungles 200 million EUR for running smartphone app for handful of years is not gonna get far with 20 billion EUR.
Sorry but the ones with the money in the bank are not the ones who will actually be concerned or capable of working towards sovereignty because its opposed to their income source.
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[ 10.2 ms ] story [ 203 ms ] threadIn large cloud environments it's about who controls the data, not the physical location. Gigabytes of data can be transferred in seconds to other side of the world. With a flip of a switch it can be totally erased or made inaccessible even to people with physical access to the servers.
> If you want to compete you must also invest in associated PaaS and SaaS-services supported by a development framework to code and integrate it all.
People have got to start somewhere, and they can't really take shortcuts. Messages of the type "you need to build all the spectrum of services available on big US brands ovenight" aren't really useful.
I very much doubt SAP has the competence to replicate this. I'll also bet those unnamed open-source technologies are mostly sprinkled on top of proprietary Azure tech, like the rest of their infrastructure.
A bit like SpaceX doing rocketry with modern CAD and computing power. It’s much cheaper and faster iteration from what NASA had to deal with.
The problem is, the European mindset towards software. Maybe Americans doing it in Europe can have much greater chance.
but SAP that want to build it??? idk about that, rather prefer OVH or Hetzner to take the helm
The best market to expand besides your own Euro-country is the US but tthen when you enter that market you are too small of a fish to do anything.
There is no such thing as european companies. It's german companies, french companies all mainly focused on their main markets.
Sorry but the ones with the money in the bank are not the ones who will actually be concerned or capable of working towards sovereignty because its opposed to their income source.