I do not blame them for doing this. And if they move over to LibreOffice and a distro like SUSE replacing Microsoft products, they will eventually see support costs decreasing a lot.
Cloud, I do not know if that will reduce costs, but at least they will know their data is more secure than with AWS, Microsoft and others.
Are there any publicly traded European cloud companies that will benefit from Europe hosting more of their stuff on their own?
I looked at IONOS, but it seems they just let their cloud product rot away? The cloud backend looks outdated and lacks basic features like uploading private keys that can be used when provisioning new VMs.
I also looked at OVH, but their website and interface look like total chaos to me. I felt lost all the time while I was trying to set up a VM, and while trying to use their AI APIs.
Considering that Europe has an economy as large as the USA, it is puzzling how small these companies are. The combined market cap of IONOS and OVH is less than $10B.
Why would ANY global business still rely on U.S. Tech? The U.S. government, through their executive orders and dissolving of the separations of powers, has demonstrated its ability to unilaterally disrupt or shut down private technology services at will. How can any business justify depending on U.S.-based tech infrastructure when its access could vanish overnight on a political whim by an unstable president?
If there is no rule of law, capital, talent and trust are flowing out of that country - for good reason.
US big tech is not just no longer reliable but toxic, predatory, prying, patronizing, etc..
I have to rely on office 365 at work for some minimal functions. I generally try to avoid it and only use it when necessary. The other day when I logged in to look for some document everything was hidden and Copilot AI was front and center. Copilot is the dumbest LLM possible, terrible integration, terrible responses, everything has become a headache for a simple task I had to do. How long would have until Microsoft corpo customers grind to a halt?
I have been saying this for years most governments instead of spending 100s of billions on software subscription would have been better of supporting open source software. But that is too communist an ideal for these capitalist controlled governments at least they are now moving against foreign capitalist at least.
I think that's the wrong approach. No matter how hard or easy it is, Microsoft controls it and do you'll be putting huge amounts of effort forever, whereas they can break your stuff with little effort. Losing battle.
Too little, too late. After the Snowden revelations there were no reasons to use US tech, for any org outside of the USA. It was obvious that US state actors do not respect any non-US actor. We Europeans need to treat US IT companies just like Russian or Chinese IT companies. And build our own infrastructure. The US does not care about alliences. It will treat any ally just like any other country.
Edit: Office365 is a pile of horse poo. These tools do not allow you to do brain surgery. There are other alternatives to write text, do calculations, and send emails. Nothing that justifies being compromised by US state actors.
This administration in particular has done more to erode and destroy American soft power than any other and it's not even close.
A lot of people fundamnetally misunderstand the source of the US's power. Some think it's because oil and other commodities are traded in US dollars. It's not. Oil is traded in US dollars because of American soft and hard power, not the other way around. Sell oil in euros and people will just trade their euros for USD for the exact same reasons.
The ultimate source of American global power is the US military, period. Where the British Empire once was so powerful because it was the world's drug dealer (first tobacco, later opium), the US is the world's arms dealer. The US got incredibly wealthy from WW1 and WW2 and there are many conflicts to this day where each side is firing US sourced weapons at each other.
It requires finesse to maintain this position. It's a bit like being a bank. A bank needs a certain facade of predictability, even neutrality, to continue to profit off whatever happens. People can revolt against the bank and the banking system. It's happened before (eg penny auctions in the Great Depression).
What this administration is teaching the world is that the US is becoming unreliable. It's now a threat to sovereignty and national security to be reliant on the US, for anything. This goes well beyond cloud services and US tech giants. The US was always capable of turning on its protectorates and puppet states but it generally behaved in a far more restrained way to maintain the illusion of independance or at least to prioritize stability and predictability.
I fully expect in the coming years that the EU is going to create their own competitors to things like AWS and they're going to do it by mandating its use by all government systems. It's going to be the new Airbus counter to Boeing.
China is way ahead in this game. A lot of people (myself included) like to point to how much infrastructure, particularly rail, China has built in the last few decades. But fewer look at how they've done it. China originally bought European high speed intercity trains but that was temporary. They bootstrapped their own industries and produce their own trains now. And they use the same rolling stock on all metros and intercity lines to avoid the inefficiencies of localized procurement processes.
I believe that a command economy like China will be the clear winner of the 21st century.
Competition is good, but they should start from the OS level.
Outside of Windows and MacOS, there is no OS ecosystem that works as well and at scale for an enterprise level deployment.
I don't get the whole "US" aspect, why bring politics into this? We need alternatives and competition regardless of all that. I don't care if Europe, China or India make it, a viable alternative would be a game changer.
For Europe, they're solving the wrong problem. Solve the problem of low pay for developers, and a stifling regulatory atmosphere that inhibits disruptive startups.
If there is a good and viable alternative, why is it just for Europe? It could boost Europe's economy by selling to America and the rest of the world. The tech needs to be good, if the US can do it, why can't Europe?
Replacing office or one app at at time only addresses surface level issues.
it's been years since the last time I go to zdnet. My experience when opening the link: I've been greeted by a dialog asking me to enable notifications, then the classic cookie dialog, and 5 seconds into reading the article, an auto-playing video with sound shows up pinned to the bottom of my screen. No thank you. Tab closed.
22 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 40.1 ms ] threadCloud, I do not know if that will reduce costs, but at least they will know their data is more secure than with AWS, Microsoft and others.
I looked at IONOS, but it seems they just let their cloud product rot away? The cloud backend looks outdated and lacks basic features like uploading private keys that can be used when provisioning new VMs.
I also looked at OVH, but their website and interface look like total chaos to me. I felt lost all the time while I was trying to set up a VM, and while trying to use their AI APIs.
Considering that Europe has an economy as large as the USA, it is puzzling how small these companies are. The combined market cap of IONOS and OVH is less than $10B.
Are you aware of any tracking web that would display all these efforts? Wiki seems a bit outdated: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adoption_of_free_and_open-sour...
EDIT: this seems to be a dupe of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45732485
If there is no rule of law, capital, talent and trust are flowing out of that country - for good reason.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45732485
I have to rely on office 365 at work for some minimal functions. I generally try to avoid it and only use it when necessary. The other day when I logged in to look for some document everything was hidden and Copilot AI was front and center. Copilot is the dumbest LLM possible, terrible integration, terrible responses, everything has become a headache for a simple task I had to do. How long would have until Microsoft corpo customers grind to a halt?
It can't be that hard to make one, can it? (Famous last words, I know...)
Edit: Office365 is a pile of horse poo. These tools do not allow you to do brain surgery. There are other alternatives to write text, do calculations, and send emails. Nothing that justifies being compromised by US state actors.
A lot of people fundamnetally misunderstand the source of the US's power. Some think it's because oil and other commodities are traded in US dollars. It's not. Oil is traded in US dollars because of American soft and hard power, not the other way around. Sell oil in euros and people will just trade their euros for USD for the exact same reasons.
The ultimate source of American global power is the US military, period. Where the British Empire once was so powerful because it was the world's drug dealer (first tobacco, later opium), the US is the world's arms dealer. The US got incredibly wealthy from WW1 and WW2 and there are many conflicts to this day where each side is firing US sourced weapons at each other.
It requires finesse to maintain this position. It's a bit like being a bank. A bank needs a certain facade of predictability, even neutrality, to continue to profit off whatever happens. People can revolt against the bank and the banking system. It's happened before (eg penny auctions in the Great Depression).
What this administration is teaching the world is that the US is becoming unreliable. It's now a threat to sovereignty and national security to be reliant on the US, for anything. This goes well beyond cloud services and US tech giants. The US was always capable of turning on its protectorates and puppet states but it generally behaved in a far more restrained way to maintain the illusion of independance or at least to prioritize stability and predictability.
I fully expect in the coming years that the EU is going to create their own competitors to things like AWS and they're going to do it by mandating its use by all government systems. It's going to be the new Airbus counter to Boeing.
China is way ahead in this game. A lot of people (myself included) like to point to how much infrastructure, particularly rail, China has built in the last few decades. But fewer look at how they've done it. China originally bought European high speed intercity trains but that was temporary. They bootstrapped their own industries and produce their own trains now. And they use the same rolling stock on all metros and intercity lines to avoid the inefficiencies of localized procurement processes.
I believe that a command economy like China will be the clear winner of the 21st century.
Outside of Windows and MacOS, there is no OS ecosystem that works as well and at scale for an enterprise level deployment.
I don't get the whole "US" aspect, why bring politics into this? We need alternatives and competition regardless of all that. I don't care if Europe, China or India make it, a viable alternative would be a game changer.
For Europe, they're solving the wrong problem. Solve the problem of low pay for developers, and a stifling regulatory atmosphere that inhibits disruptive startups.
If there is a good and viable alternative, why is it just for Europe? It could boost Europe's economy by selling to America and the rest of the world. The tech needs to be good, if the US can do it, why can't Europe?
Replacing office or one app at at time only addresses surface level issues.