EU Shoots For $11.7B 'Industrial Cloud' To Rival US (politico.eu) 77
The European Union aims to spend up to 10 billion euro ($11.7 million) over the next seven years to help build up a homegrown cloud computing sector that could rival foreign corporations such as Amazon, Google and Alibaba. From a report: Twenty-five EU countries signed a joint declaration last week pledging public money to power up the cloud sector and establishing the "European Alliance on Industrial Data and Cloud," a partnership geared toward facilitating such projects. The alliance -- whose funding is to be drawn from existing EU programs and hoped-for pledges from industry and national capitals -- will be launched by the end of the year. Cyprus and Denmark were the only EU member countries not to sign the declaration due to "technical reasons." The declaration "is a foundation stone for the establishment of European cloud technology, which will be very high performing," said Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton, following a meeting of European telecoms ministers organized by the German government, which currently holds the EU's rotating Council presidency. "Contrary to the prejudices, we are not late [on cloud development]. We are the first to get involved in the industrial cloud," he added.
Maybe they should use some of those (Score:2)
Raspberry Pi Compute Modules
10 billion € (Score:5, Informative)
10 billion € are equal to 11.7 billion $, the summary is off by 3 orders of magnitude
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10 billion € are equal to 11.7 billion $, the summary is off by 3 orders of magnitude
Maybe. A German "billion" translates to an English "trillion". https://german.yabla.com/lesso... [yabla.com]
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Except the summary says million so it's a typo and whilst here in the UK a billion used to mean a million million, we don't use it like that any more for obvious reasons, now in modern English articles we assume a billion to mean a thousand million. I've never seen the Euro billion be described as anything other than a thousand billion either.
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Did you mean "a thousand million, either"?
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Doh. There's should be a law for, like Microsoft updates, every bug fixed is a bug gained.
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Continental English is not a language, it is just an excuse not to learn one of the languages you've chosen to try to use.
Re: 10 billion € (Score:3)
Maybe just the post-Corona exchange rate... ;)
Don't worry. We're on track to reversing it. :)
-- The *cough* European *coughcough* Union *weeze*
Excellent news (Score:5, Funny)
Good to the the Europeans building on the success of Quaero.
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These gov't sponsored programs to jump into already-established markets fail more often than not. Fostering education, research centers, and international standards tends to be more fruitful than outright make-a-company programs.
China has been relatively successful at such partly because they have de-facto slaves. Their migrant worker class is essentially a second-level class. (Dictatorships can do that.) However, such doesn't work as well for service-centric businesses that need lots of cooperating special
A matter of Scale. Factor of 10 to small. (Score:4, Informative)
Thats 40 billion dollars per year in sales just for the primary US based player . Going to take 120 billion dollars in infrastructure at any cost efficiency to enter into the market at a scale rivaling AWS in 2021-2023.
Airbus pre covid had sales of 70 billion with about 4 billion in government support from EU partners.
Re: A matter of Scale. Factor of 10 to small. (Score:2)
Re: A matter of Scale. Factor of 10 to small. (Score:4, Insightful)
This is mainly about the EU no longer trusting the US or UK and building their own completely seperate and secured cloud, seperate from the US.
They will of course be passing this all off to insiders to maximise kick backs and profits but that is not the actual goal.
Cutting of USA control of EU data is, cutting of US social media is and cutting off USA DOMINANCE is. The insiders will profit, is simply par for the course amongst the corrupt establishment and it's many psychopaths.
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Is it really about dominance, or is it just the same old spite / NIH that we've seen before? cf PAL.
10 billion euro ($11.7 million) (Score:4, Funny)
European politicians don't understand capitalism (Score:4, Insightful)
Yet again European politicians show that they do no understand capitalism. In contrast, the Chinese politicians understand capitalism extremely well. The European politicians behave like feudal land lords, their Chinese counterparts behave like business people.
Re:European politicians don't understand capitalis (Score:5, Interesting)
Yet again European politicians show that they do no understand capitalism.
Not entirely clear. If the cloud is critical infrastructure, possibly it should be public.
Maybe it's we who don't understand capitalism, and most particularly don't understand that there are some parts of infrastructure where capitalism isn't the right solution.
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Not only can it be joint venture, and have initial capital, it can have revenue, that would not leave continent, which is quite strategic achievement, if successful. It's about the time for Europe to seriously reconsider digital future, and who, where are those super-sized giants of already questionable present.
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The challenge is convincing Europeans to use the new European services and infrastructure instead of the existing services.
Given the pace of innovation and how much of it is coming from America and China it's not even the cash that's an issue. There's an entire culture around risk taking that's missing.
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Even if new infrastructure starts with serving institutions, this will be quite significant, as state institutions scope quite a share of overall society. With businesses having local resources offered, it would be about overall expense. Taking into account, as well, risks of lending your vital information to somebody overseas you have so much less of control over, say, just alone because of finding your state in competing camp, than that of service provider. Another thing - standards, APIs: if they keep do
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if new infrastructure starts with serving institutions
I'm a technology leader in a European institution. Do I use the expensive EU sponsored infrastructure that lacks many features my existing deployments already use or do I pay less to use a superior option that gives me new and better ways to delivering my services.
risks of lending your vital information to somebody overseas
I can host on Azure in Ireland, France or Germany. (Poland, Spain, Italy and Greece all on the way too).
I can host on AWS in Ireland, Sweden, France, Germany or Italy. (Spain also coming soon).
Then there are the smaller players like Google, Oracle
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It would be fair enough, even if resources allocated are mostly geared towards converting technologies in foreign CONTROL into form and status, acceptable for Europe. It is hard do believe, how carelessly you overlook this CONTROL key in favor of where servers are physically kept. Would you care if data are relocated from one European country to another (or home to America and what-not), yet these, as countries, have very little to say or do about the life of the data on their physical ground, while CONTROL
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Oh, I see. You don't have experience in deploying secure cloud based systems.
I don't give control away. I don't need to. I'm legally obliged not to. I don't overlook the control aspect because retaining it is a given; it was never even in doubt.
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secure AMERICAN cloud based systems
secure CHINESE cloud based systems
Re: European politicians don't understand capitali (Score:1, Troll)
Typical Ferengi-American.
You don't understand: We do not WANT that capitalism.
Gasp all you want. American cultural rule is over.
You killed it by electing Annoying Orange Man, and the neocons before him, and going over the top and then some.
Re: European politicians don't understand capital (Score:2)
Fake marxists??
Will you ever run out of windmills to tilt at?
Make sure to strike between the giant's flailing arms so you don't get hurt bud. Watch out for the the giant feminist on the other hill, she's giving you the eye.
Re: European politicians don't understand capitali (Score:4, Interesting)
You do realize that 80+ percent of the Venezuelan economy is still capitalist, don't you? That the reason why their currency has problems is 20 years of unremitting attacks on their economy by the US, a couple hundred million dollars illegally seized by the US and handed to the puppet Gusano (who no one in Venezuela voted for because he never even bothered running before declaring himself president), and the worst drought in over 150 years, right? You didn't know that? Well, perhaps you should read something besides the NY Post and the Washington Times.
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That's called the Appeal to Authority Fallacy. https://www.softschools.com/ex... [softschools.com]
Don't they teach this stuff in schools any more?
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Jeremy Corbyn said: "Chavez ... showed us that there is a different, and a better way of doing things. It's called socialism".
Chavez hasn't been in charge for a while..
Also regarding your sig: the reason "the woke" won't debate you is because you're impervious to logic, reason and inconvenient facts an you can't form or follow a coherent argument, nor admit to any error. It's impossible to debate someone who does nothing but yell talking points an invents facts to suit.
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TL;DR no u
You'd be a lot more succinct if you were a zoomer, though "no u" also comes with a side order of irony, something which also isn't your jam.
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Yes, the woke don't debate because ...
No, the woke won't debate YOU because you're impervious to anything debate is meant to achieve. If you refuse to listen, parrot talking points and cheer on your team blindly, then debate is an exercise in futility. Since you do those, no one will debate you. But as your dates frequently say, it's not me, it's you.
Thus they reject The Enlightenment, which produced arguments based on facts, logic, objective truth, 2+2=4, and so on.
As a follower of Evariste Galois, I reje
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Lol no. So much ignorance. So much anger.
2+2=4 is for the natural numbers and supersets thereof (rationals, reals, complex, hyperreals) etc.
On Galois fields with a modulus of less than 4, 2+2 does not equal 4.
Maths is the freedom to say 2+2= whatever the hell you want and follow the consequences, be they trivial, inconsistent or interesting. I would rather have that freedom than your rather limited idea of freedom.
If you don't believe me them switch off your internet connection and throw all related devices
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Compare the economy, standard of living, public safety, health, average life span, education, child mortality, or pretty much any other measure you like of Cuba and any non-colony in Central America or the Caribbean. There are advantages of not having financial ties to the US.
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You do realize that 80+ percent of the Venezuelan economy is still capitalist, don't you? That the reason why their currency has problems is 20 years of unremitting attacks on their economy by the US, a couple hundred million dollars illegally seized by the US and handed to the puppet Gusano (who no one in Venezuela voted for because he never even bothered running before declaring himself president), and the worst drought in over 150 years, right?
Can you back the 80+ percent claim up with reliable sources? I frankly believe you exaggerate and you know it is good discussion etiquette to provide sources for claims that you make in a discussion.
Besides that this binary division into capitalist and socialist components of the economy makes little sense since the government of Venezuela regulates what you call the capitalist component of the economy tightly with tools that are socialist in nature such as price controls and tight control of capital flows.
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Whoops, sorry, my bad. Seventy percent, it's changed in the last few years.
https://www.aporrea.org/actual... [aporrea.org]
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The reason why their currency has collapsed is that Chavez came to power and seized control of key industries, taking them from the hands of people who were running them successfully and putting them in the hands of incomeptent and corrupt political flunkies. Th
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Wow, you really have swallowed the kooaide, haven't you?
a Capitalist economy requires a democratic political system that protects individual liberty.
There's a fellow who would have disagreed with you a bit, he was named Adam Smith, and he wrote a little piece you might have heard of but almost certainly never read called 'On The Wealth Of Nations".
The Chavez-Maduro regime is a Socialist dictatorship.
Dictatorship? Is this what we're calling the winner of 70% of the vote in elections international observers called "free and fair"? (Incidentally the US's own election system doesn't qualify as either "free" or "fair" under international standards.)
The idea that somehow the US was responsible for Chavez' utter failure is absurd.
So 20
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Or, to put it another way, you cannot be free to act economically if you are not free politically,
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So capitalism doesn't exist in the Untied States? Well, that's a novel claim, I truly wonder what confusion of ideas produced that conclusion.
Before Chavez around 90% of the country's income went to the top 5% of the population, it was one of the most unequal economies in the world. And they most certainly did **NOT** have a "broad economic base", its principle export has been petroleum for the last several decades. You may be thinking of Colombia, where petroleum competes with coffee and cocaine for exp
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What makes you think the rest of the world has any such opinion of the American electoral system? Besides the natural inclination to assume everyone agrees with you.
What do you think a "voter purge" is? Something other than removing obsolete entries from the rolls? Did you know that certain States had to be sued in order to get them to remove dead people from the voter rolls, or bother to check if someone was enrolled in
President Trump (Score:2)
Lives rent-free in the space between your ears.
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Wow, it's been a while since I've a seen a racist slur against Ferengi. Boy that takes me back.
Americans don't want to be "cultural role", whatever that is. But the world just won't let us go. We pay for the defense of your countries and your social welfare states would collapse if you paid your fair share. I don't see it changing, as much as we'd like to bring it to a stop.
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Re:European politicians don't understand capitalis (Score:5, Informative)
Regarding China, I've heard it said that one reason they're doing so well is that a large proportion of the Chinese Leadership are Engineers (rather than, I suppose, Lawyers). I don't know if this is true, but it is interesting to note that Thierry Breton has a master's degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
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I think we can assume that he knows something about (1) business (i.e. capitalism) and "Industrial Data and Cloud".
Sorry, at Atos? He may know something about IT bodyshopping and being an outsourced integration partner but that's a very different market, skillset and approach to devising and implementing innovative solutions.
Disclosure: I once interviewed at Sema. They wanted me to work on mainframes. It was a happy outcome; I got a job elsewhere instead.
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As to markets, well as it says in the linked wikipedia article (to just grab one snippet); "In April 2018, Atos announces a global partnership with Google Cloud to help offer secure artificial intelligence systems.". This w
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you were possibly interviewed before then
I'm old.
Disclosure, until I retired earlier this year, I worked for Atos.
Maybe not as old as you.
Atos announces a global partnership with Google Cloud to help offer secure artificial intelligence systems.". This was under Breton's leadership, so presumably they (and he) know a bit more than just body-shopping and outsourcing!
My interpretation of that would be that Google provide the technology and innovation, Atos help clients understand how to use it and integrate it with their own systems.
Most large technology purchases work like that. You buy from company A and work with company B as the SI.
Also, in the context of the post I was replying to, it was about EU politicians (unlike their Chinese counterparts) not understanding capitalism, and also the Chinese politicians behaving like business people. Even if you don't think much of Atos as a company, it is a successful (and growing) business, and Thierry Breton, as its former Chair and CEO, would know about business.
While I accept Breton's business credentials (and don't doubt for a moment that he's rather better at that than I am) I would hesitate to use him as an example of European politicians.
Much of what the EU do
Doing "Cloud" wrong (Score:2)
"Cloud" should be about standards that allow your servers and data to be wherever you want them, and NOT necessarily about hosting those in a conglomerate's warehouse. It should be about swappability of location and not about handing over your car keys. The conglomerates are tricking people into the second.
âTechnical reasonsâ(TM)?? (Score:1)
Re: âTechnical reasonsâ(TM)?? (Score:2)
Italy, Denmark, Lithuania and Cyprus were all hoping for extra investments from Microsoft and Amazon. Italy and Lithuania were the first to cave after being promised some pork. Now Denmark and Cyprus stand by the sidelines, getting nothing, as an example to future eu member states who wonâ(TM)t toe the line.
Where? (Score:1)
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Germany, France and VAT receipts mostly.
Used to be the UK too. Happiness.
Government spending on industry isn't necessarily a bad thing though - the US and UK both do it a lot too.
Great for skilled immigrants! (Score:1)
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The problem is as bad as US immigration has gotten, it's still better than most European countries that have way more protectionist barriers to immigration -- even skilled immigration -- than the US.
cloud on AWS or GCP? (Score:2)
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No, they're giving the money to the Chinese, who promise to deliver the exact technology agreed to. But the contract is in Chinese and just says they'll deliver some equipment.
State sponsored (Score:1)
Directly linked to the EU leadership/parties and indirectly to the militaries. I say ban them.
Interesting timing given the Schrems court case (Score:3)
This has not really filtered through yet other than a bunch of privacy folk getting very excited.
The Schrems 2 case stated that NSA surveillance of EU citizens data is unlawful under GDPR because it is excessive and does not allow for redress via the courts. The USA did set up an ombudsman for it but this is not considered appropriate. This decision was stated in relation to Facebook transferring data back to the US, but the principles would seem to apply to any other data that is potentially under NSA surveillance scope.
Couple that with the US CLOUD act, which allow requesting information held by US cloud companies anywhere in the world.
The Schrems case said it is invalidating Privacy shield, but not the SCCs. However as the SCCs cannot override US law then anyone in the EU relying on SCCs to use a US cloud provider is on very dodgy ground. All of the US cloud providers are currently doing that, because frankly they have no option other than to spin up a new non-US company to run the Euro hosting side of things.
The big problem with all this, was that there's no realistic alternative in Europe unless all you want is basic server hosting....
Is this the right way to go? (Score:2)
Let's stipulate that government intervention to establish an EU cloud is a good thing. I don't know whether it is, but let's assume so. Is this the right way to do it?
There are plenty of EU cloud providers already. They are much smaller than the US giants, meaning that their offerings are more expensive and probably offer less functionality. But: rather than subsidies, what about using the age-old power of government to charge import tariffs? Make the US offerings more expensive, and you will be giving EU b
Who will build/run it? (Score:2)
My concern then is that the EU itself will try to run it's own cloud provider, force everyone to use it, and then run it into the ground because it's simply not the sort of thing a government can do well. If instead they intend to help/encourage the formation of private domestic hosting companies, I thin