The short version For decades, governments and organizations could run services based on servers we actually owned. These days, we’ve allowed the IT world to convince us no computing is possible outside of US-style clouds, for which we have no European equivalents. And because of this conviction, we are now moving our most precious data and most critical services to US controlled servers. Yet most of European government software still runs on locally owned systems.| Bert Hubert's writings
Advanced cloud services are based on good hardware, decent software, and surrounding infrastructure that combines these both into solid solutions that can be provided as a business activity. Europe is good with operating the hardware. And surprisingly, we are also good with writing software. Much of the software used by the main cloud providers is based on open source, and lots of that open source is authored by European programmers. What we sorely lack here are providers of higher level clou...| Bert Hubert's writings
A brief addition to the 50000 words I wrote earlier on the cloud: what is the European situation? Software Initially, companies and governments would buy licenses to software. You’d typically have a piece of software in your office, on one of your computers, to calculate payroll with. Most other computers would have copies of WordPerfect installed. This software would function for years without updates or maintenance. If WordPerfect-the-company would disappear, you would not even notice.| Bert Hubert's writings
Our societies and governments now largely run on American proprietary big-tech platforms. Many of us want to decrease this dependency, or even end it altogether. This article is part of a series of posts on (European) cloud challenges. Everyone in the open tech scene is full of good intentions and we all want to improve things, but mostly we are not succeeding. By our nature, we would like to build fun, open, federated, and standards-based things.| Bert Hubert's writings
Over the past few years I’ve written a lot about the cloud, and what it means for Europe. Here I want to pull the various articles together into a coherent story. Note, nothing of what follows is in any way novel or original. While the facts presented in the articles are pretty inconvenient and in parts depressing, they are not controversial (or should not be). To get updates when I post something new, do subscribe to my mailing list.| Bert Hubert's writings
The very brief version: “going to the cloud” can mean renting services/servers that you could get from anywhere. There’s little lock-in. The same four words “going to the cloud” might also mean locking your operations to a specific cloud provider, whose proprietary services will now be part of your business processes “forever”. Be specific which variant of cloud you are signing off on! I’m mostly out of the office but this post was already in the pipeline and I thought it migh...| Bert Hubert's writings
In the earlier post ‘But how to get to that European cloud?’ I alluded to a coherent strategy that might get us to such a non-US cloud. In the present article I hope to clarify what this could mean, and why I think it could work. Here I focus especially on what should happen concretely, and who should do it. Note that this page is compatible/congruent with the latest EuroStack document.| Bert Hubert's writings
Earlier, I wrote that there isn’t just one type of cloud; it ranges from renting out servers to fully managed office software as a service. One relevant type of cloud use is what’s informally called “cloud-native.” I wrote in that earlier page that a “cloud-native developer” does not work based on servers. If you rent out virtual servers and call yourself a cloud company, a cloud-native developer won’t understand you at all.| Bert Hubert's writings
The very short version: It has now become clear that European governments can no longer rely on American clouds, and that we lack good and comprehensive alternatives. Market forces have failed to deliver a truly European cloud, and businesses won’t naturally buy as yet unproven cloud services, even when adorned with a beautiful European 🇪🇺 flag, so for now nothing will happen. This article is part of a series of posts on (European) cloud challenges.| Bert Hubert's writings
