The European Cloud: A Working Reality

This evening, a round-table discussion will take place in the House of Representatives on the proposed acquisition of Solvinity.

From warning to reality

For years, we at BIT, along with many other nerds, have been drawing attention to the risks of the mass migration to American hyperscalers. In 2024, SIDN threw a stone into the pond by announcing that it would migrate its IT to AWS. The widespread outrage that followed did not lead to a different decision.

Last year, Zivver, which provides email services for, among others, healthcare institutions and notaries, announced that it had been acquired by an American company. This takeover caused an outcry because it gave the US government access to Zivver emails.

In recent weeks, controversy has flared up again following the announced acquisition of Solvinity by an American company. Solvinity manages the IT infrastructure of DigiD and communications for the Public Prosecution Service and the Ministry of Justice & Security. Once again, this has led to serious concerns about the Netherlands’ digital sovereignty.

We have lost autonomy, but we are not powerless

The Netherlands is no longer digitally autonomous. It has not been five to midnight for quite some time. But there is still something we can do. We do not have to become a digital colony of the United States.

We often hear, both from our peers in the sector and ourselves, that government and critical infrastructure supposedly have no choice but to opt for American technology, because comparable technology would not be available in Europe. That is a completely false narrative.

Conversation with the internet sector: Europe can do it

On 26 January, several members of parliament organised a discussion with a number of organisations and companies from the Dutch internet sector about the myth that Europe can no longer deliver IT services. The sector was strikingly united: it can.

Below is the (translated) spoken contribution BIT delivered during this discussion.

“BIT is an independent Dutch cloud provider and data centre operator. We deliver services to other cloud providers, healthcare institutions, government, fintech and others. These services come with all possible certifications and standards, are built on open source, and comply with European regulations. In short, procurement teams can tick every box they might reasonably want to tick.

But we are not unique in this. There are dozens of highly competent providers in the Netherlands, and hundreds across Europe. I would therefore like to take this opportunity to make a pitch on behalf of the sector.

If we do nothing, the quality and availability of autonomous services will come under pressure. My call to action is therefore to genuinely start procuring European technology from European providers in European data centres. 80% of the services currently running on hyperscalers can be hosted in Europe without any problems.

But do not expect a clone of Microsoft or Amazon technology. Just as companies and governments have invested heavily in adopting hyperscaler technology, they will need to invest in migrating to a European cloud as well. This includes training people and adapting integrations between systems.

Strengthen the innovation being developed by European providers in open source and EU programmes. Do not build a European hyperscaler. Instead, take advantage of the diverse European ecosystem. Diversity in technology reduces the risk of outages caused by failures or hacks.

And make use of geographical distribution. Increase resilience further by demanding portability, using federated technologies and internet standards. But above all: buy European goods – they are available, and they work.”

What can you do?

As a reader, you can directly contribute to reducing dependence on American hyperscalers. When procuring IT, explicitly ask for European alternatives, set requirements for data portability and open standards, and where possible choose services that are hosted in Europe by European providers. And: encourage your organisation to invest in knowledge and migration, so that switching becomes feasible. European technology is available, and it works.

By: Wido Potters