Verda, the best Eurocloud after OVH and Scaleway!
In all ernest the lacking service of those platforms was a big driver to focus on beating others in product, highlighted some of our defining differences above in some reply.
The best open source models are Chinese, and you've got to start somewhere. Having distribution in place first helps us get the resources to do grander things tomorrow.
There are several regulated industries that need to have their computing done in the EU without ties to US companies. Sovereignty is currently a big political topic.
Them putting services in EU (even as subsidiaries) is just a marketing strategy where they are straight up lying to customers so they can get more money.
Cloud Act: The CLOUD Act (Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data Act) is a U.S. federal law passed in 2018 that allows U.S. law enforcement to compel U.S.-based tech and cloud companies to hand over customer data, even if that data is stored on servers located outside the United States
The data sovereignty stuff is mostly just lip-service. Both the EU and Canada are in the process of negotiating reciprocal CLOUD Act arrangements with the US government similar to what UK and Australia already have in place.
> EU-US agreement [1]
> Negotiations with the United States to facilitate cross-border access to e-evidence for judicial cooperation in criminal matters started in September 2019 and are currently ongoing. At present, US-based service providers collaborate with European law enforcement authorities through direct cooperation on a voluntary basis or through mutual legal assistance (MLA) procedures.
> AWS / Azure et al, who are also available in the EU
Because US-in-EU is fake-EU.
CLOUD act, PATRIOT act etc. etc. US headquarters doesn't escape the arm of US law.
Remember a long time ago there was a famous case where Microsoft fought the US DoJ when they came looking for somebody's data in Azure Ireland ?
That was then. Now is now. Do you honestly think Microsoft would put up the same fight today, especially if the US President decided to lean on them ? I don't !
CLOUD/PATRIOT etc. has gone from a theoretical risk to a real one. And now you have a US President in office who doesn't care much for bypassing all that anyway.
The economics of it are the same as for Hetzner. AWS is trying to split the difference by offering services that are supposedly run exclusively by EU citizens, from data centers located in the EU. The reasoning is pretty solid for at least the next two or three years. It might take another five to restore trust in US tech. Not a bad amount of runway.
It's a bit sad that the only responses you get is "It's based in EU". If that's the only thing, it's not really impressive is it?
Don't get me wrong, as a European I'm all for EU, but we should offer products and services that are at least as good as abroad competitors. My company still relies heavily on US tech, for the simple fact that lots of it is plain better and/or cheaper.
I entirely agree - and we're not aiming to build the eleventh shitty Eurocloud.
We aim at building a platform that wins on product first and foremost. Some areas where we are good/great/best in class globally vs. hyperscalers and other neoclouds:
- End-to-end automated clusters (great)
- GPU VM setup time (best in class)
- Confidential Compute on high end GPU infra (great, only one offering this by default afaik)
- Kernel development support (best in class) - we have NVIDIA themselves using our platform for kernel development. Some exciting products coming out soon (tm).
- Customer support (good/great) Might sound lame but have you tried AWS as a sub 10M revenue customer?
Working hard on some hard engineering problems which will make this list longer!
You should probably say that you are the founder or maybe add that in your profile description so that other people realize you are not just a passionate employee ;) Congratulations to you and everyone at Verda.
Could you elaborate on your last point about AWS? I am interested in what you mean exactly since a lot of companies in Finland fall under that sub 10M umbrella and use AWS / Azure extensively
Well I mean Verda is significantly cheaper than the hyperscalars for the exact same device so that’s one thing.
Maybe one argument could be there’s very little value added services required over the raw compute in this new world, and they’re structurally setup to capitalise on that whereas hyperscalars are not.
I'd love to give someone at Verda a demo of https://github.com/purpleidea/mgmt/ to show them how they could actually do fast provisioning and automation. Seeing Ansible+Kubernetes+K* stuff in their jobs offering does not inspire confidence that they're innovating in building their core infra. You can't out-compete AWS or even the smaller clouds there.
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[ 0.27 ms ] story [ 9.0 ms ] threadHopefully it's for buying VSORA or Euclyd machines, but well...
The Euclyd machines, probably many months away.
Can someone please help me understand what their competitive advantage is, versus the likes of AWS / Azure et al, who are also available in the EU.
I love a good underdog story, but I'm not understanding the economics of it.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act
> EU-US agreement [1]
> Negotiations with the United States to facilitate cross-border access to e-evidence for judicial cooperation in criminal matters started in September 2019 and are currently ongoing. At present, US-based service providers collaborate with European law enforcement authorities through direct cooperation on a voluntary basis or through mutual legal assistance (MLA) procedures.
[1] https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/policies/e-evidence/
Because US-in-EU is fake-EU.
CLOUD act, PATRIOT act etc. etc. US headquarters doesn't escape the arm of US law.
Remember a long time ago there was a famous case where Microsoft fought the US DoJ when they came looking for somebody's data in Azure Ireland ?
That was then. Now is now. Do you honestly think Microsoft would put up the same fight today, especially if the US President decided to lean on them ? I don't !
CLOUD/PATRIOT etc. has gone from a theoretical risk to a real one. And now you have a US President in office who doesn't care much for bypassing all that anyway.
Don't get me wrong, as a European I'm all for EU, but we should offer products and services that are at least as good as abroad competitors. My company still relies heavily on US tech, for the simple fact that lots of it is plain better and/or cheaper.
We aim at building a platform that wins on product first and foremost. Some areas where we are good/great/best in class globally vs. hyperscalers and other neoclouds: - End-to-end automated clusters (great) - GPU VM setup time (best in class) - Confidential Compute on high end GPU infra (great, only one offering this by default afaik) - Kernel development support (best in class) - we have NVIDIA themselves using our platform for kernel development. Some exciting products coming out soon (tm). - Customer support (good/great) Might sound lame but have you tried AWS as a sub 10M revenue customer?
Working hard on some hard engineering problems which will make this list longer!
Could you elaborate on your last point about AWS? I am interested in what you mean exactly since a lot of companies in Finland fall under that sub 10M umbrella and use AWS / Azure extensively
Maybe one argument could be there’s very little value added services required over the raw compute in this new world, and they’re structurally setup to capitalise on that whereas hyperscalars are not.
Disclaimer: I work at Verda.
If you want to see a different perspective, lmk.