alt Hacker News> Yes, the EU “cloud providers” are lagging behind but they’re catching up. Scaleway, Herzner, and others are there, and you should check them out if you’re starting a business in the EU.
I would argue that these aren't even "cloud providers", they are just VPS providers. Which is fine, but it's not the same thing.
There really isn't any European "cloud" service at all, which is a huge part of the problem. And I doubt there ever will be because who would even build it?
It would cost billions and billions of euros just to be "not AWS" (but worse in every way except location). Who is investing in that?
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You cannot possibly with a straight face claim that Scaleway is a VPS provider. Hetzner, sure, but Scaleway offers compute and database services in the same way that AWS does - just fewer.
But why would the Europeans want to copy the US "cloud" model of micro-compartmentalizing services into hundreds of abstracted products carefully designed to have circular dependencies between each other ..... And all shipped with price sheets billed in invented unit metrics and more small-print than a packet of prescription drugs that makes it completely impossible to predict how much you're going to pay.
I'll take the cleaner approach with predictable billing offered by the EU providers. Even if it means using my brain to RTFM and edit a couple of config files (which can then be rolled into automation via images or Ansible or whatever).
A lot of people actually are. I am running multiple apps on EU-based clouds offers (most PaaS rather than VPS), to the tune of multiple billion queries per year.
The offer really has moved, and people are taking it seriously.
Also: not worst in every dimension at all. For instance, you actually get serious support, no matter your size, a much better version of what premium accounts give you at AWS/GCP etc.
> And I doubt there ever will be because who would even build it?
My money would be on the French.
Good thing is that in EU we still have a lot of people who know how to write software. Like, in programming languages.
This…
It’s painful being a non-EU person working here, and hearing people wax lyrical about sovereign EU cloud without an actual product or product plan.
And once a product is anctua shipped and offered it is like already 5 years behind what US clouds are offering.
It’s embarrassing really
> Who is investing in that?
Big companies that see the opportunity to be "Not AWS"?
A VPS provider who wants to grow their marketshare?
Nation states?
Not saying it'll be a small effort, but if the US continues to wield national laws to coerce American companies to negatively affect European citizens, it's possible.
I know Cyso Cloud (previously Fuga Cloud - still Netherlands-hosted) lets you host K8S applications, and has S3-compatible storage. Is that what you mean with "cloud"?
> There really isn't any European "cloud" service at all, which is a huge part of the problem. And I doubt there ever will be because who would even build it?
Lidl! https://horovits.medium.com/lidl-is-taking-on-aws-the-age-of...
>they are just VPS providers
Are we really bringing back this debate from 10 or may be 15 years when we started? Is Digital Ocean, Linode not a cloud provider. They were the VPS provider at the time.
I think in the end I agree with one of the argument, as long as these VPS providers give you a VPS that is charged per hour or per seconds, then they are cloud. Which ultimately is a server that is easily scaled up or down and charged on a time usage basis, when VPS at the time were a fixed monthly price.