> Digital sovereignty sounds like a buzzword until you think
Sure now just think and give me the reason. All these moving to Europe post is getting tiring. Amazon follows the same EU rules, if not more, than Scaleway.
Matt Lakeman writes in one of his blogs that wherever he goes, people tend to love the USA. Except in Europe where he faces a constant storm of criticism. And that was before February. Just like you cannot explain the taste of chocolate to someone, it is hardly possible to explain the mental shift that happened everywhere when the US threatened the EU with military invasion. Like a broken egg this is diplomatic damage that cannot be repaired.
If you sell software and you tell your customers and prospects that everything runs in Europe, by European companies, this instills an enormous amount of trust. Risk averse sectors like manufacturing love this, and it will help you gain customers immediately.
So no, these posts are not tiring to many of us. In fact, we are only at the beginning of the beginning because many of us will be making these migrations. I wish things had run a different course.
So you are saying the reason that it is just perceived better?
Even that's quite debatable as I worked in few European companies and has never faced any backlash for choosing US vendor. Biggest European tech companies like Mistral and Klarna use many US vendors like AWS.
Yes. It is both a little funny, and true. Often departments don't even want to start a software project if it is being perceived as "legal and IT are going to have all kinds of opinions on this". When we say everything runs in Europe, by European companies, it actually signals "there will be no problem with GDPR and data sensitivity, and your legal and IT departments won't complain, and the CEO will love it".
Those legal and IT departments of companies favours Microsoft and Amazon, as they are sure they won't get any issue with regulation, or if they do they are the ones who can have better legal representation than a small open source self hosted software.
There is just no reason to believe European companies are any better in data privacy. I signed up for Hetzner once and they asked for my passport. Any American company doing that would be bashed so hard here.
It's not about the company per se, it's whether choosing a US vendor exposes you to a capricious US government who has shown it's willing to pull almost any lever to get what it wants.
The US Cloud Act already means no US company can give you legal reassurance of European law compliance - and while some companies have choosen to pretend this isn't the case for convenience - the legal position is clear.
However now there is the prospect of a rogue US government leveraging control of IT infrastructure for extortion or simple theft ( under the guise of national interest ).
You mention Microsoft at the same time that multiple EU governments are moving away from Windows and Microsoft Office and recommending businesses to do the same.
Sure now just think and give me the reason. All these moving to Europe post is getting tiring. Amazon follows the same EU rules, if not more, than Scaleway.