{"id":657142,"date":"2025-03-15T05:25:09","date_gmt":"2025-03-15T02:25:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/european-cloud-hosts-offer-an-escape-from-aws-azure-and-gcp\/"},"modified":"2025-03-15T05:25:09","modified_gmt":"2025-03-15T02:25:09","slug":"european-cloud-hosts-offer-an-escape-from-aws-azure-and-gcp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/european-cloud-hosts-offer-an-escape-from-aws-azure-and-gcp\/","title":{"rendered":"#European cloud hosts offer an escape from AWS, Azure, and GCP"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"ez-toc-container\" class=\"ez-toc-v2_0_85 counter-hierarchy ez-toc-counter ez-toc-custom ez-toc-container-direction\">\n<p class=\"ez-toc-title\" style=\"cursor:inherit\">Table of Contents<\/p>\n<label for=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-item-6a40c42a7a3ac\" class=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-label\"><span class=\"\"><span class=\"eztoc-hide\" style=\"display:none;\">Toggle<\/span><span class=\"ez-toc-icon-toggle-span\"><svg style=\"fill: #dd3333;color:#dd3333\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" class=\"list-377408\" width=\"20px\" height=\"20px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" fill=\"none\"><path d=\"M6 6H4v2h2V6zm14 0H8v2h12V6zM4 11h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2zM4 16h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2z\" fill=\"currentColor\"><\/path><\/svg><svg style=\"fill: #dd3333;color:#dd3333\" class=\"arrow-unsorted-368013\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" width=\"10px\" height=\"10px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" version=\"1.2\" baseProfile=\"tiny\"><path d=\"M18.2 9.3l-6.2-6.3-6.2 6.3c-.2.2-.3.4-.3.7s.1.5.3.7c.2.2.4.3.7.3h11c.3 0 .5-.1.7-.3.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7zM5.8 14.7l6.2 6.3 6.2-6.3c.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7c-.2-.2-.4-.3-.7-.3h-11c-.3 0-.5.1-.7.3-.2.2-.3.5-.3.7s.1.5.3.7z\"\/><\/svg><\/span><\/span><\/label><input type=\"checkbox\"  id=\"ez-toc-cssicon-toggle-item-6a40c42a7a3ac\" checked aria-label=\"Toggle\" \/><nav><ul class='ez-toc-list ez-toc-list-level-1 ' ><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-1\" href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/european-cloud-hosts-offer-an-escape-from-aws-azure-and-gcp\/#The_cloud_is_consolidated_and_monopolised\" >The cloud is consolidated and monopolised<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-2\" href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/european-cloud-hosts-offer-an-escape-from-aws-azure-and-gcp\/#Diversifying_the_cloud\" >Diversifying the cloud<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-3\" href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/european-cloud-hosts-offer-an-escape-from-aws-azure-and-gcp\/#The_cloud_hasnt_lived_up_to_its_promise\" >The cloud hasn\u2019t lived up to its promise<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-4\" href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/european-cloud-hosts-offer-an-escape-from-aws-azure-and-gcp\/#The_European_difference\" >The European difference<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-5\" href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/european-cloud-hosts-offer-an-escape-from-aws-azure-and-gcp\/#Cost_efficiency\" >Cost efficiency<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-6\" href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/european-cloud-hosts-offer-an-escape-from-aws-azure-and-gcp\/#A_trustworthy_cloud\" >A trustworthy cloud<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-7\" href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/european-cloud-hosts-offer-an-escape-from-aws-azure-and-gcp\/#A_less_wasteful_cloud\" >A less wasteful cloud<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-8\" href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/european-cloud-hosts-offer-an-escape-from-aws-azure-and-gcp\/#The_future_of_the_cloud\" >The future of the cloud<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/nav><\/div>\n<div id=\"article-main-content\">\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When the modern-day internet began emerging in the early 2000s<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, finding hosting services and resources to run the new wave of dynamic web <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/download-scripts-themes-apps\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"9\" title=\"Download Scripts &amp; Themes &amp; Apps\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">app<\/a>lications was hard. You needed a database to store application data. These were slow, expensive, and unreliable, regularly bringing applications to a grinding halt when a single instance failed. You needed a server to run interpreted languages like PHP, Python, or Ruby. These were equally expensive, often needed configuration, had security issues, and frequently ran out of memory or CPU resources, again bringing applications to a grinding halt.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For anyone on a small budget, running web 2.0-era applications required constant configuration tweaking, tight performance streamlining, and cost reduction, all within the typically tight confines of what a provider would even let you change and manage yourself.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Between those heady days and now, an increasing patchwork of hosting providers emerged to cope with the complexity and scale that web applications demanded. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For the past 10 years, a significant proportion of applications have moved to a new generation called \u201ccloud hosting\u201d. The term \u201ccloud\u201d is a bit vague, and there\u2019s a popular (but not altogether accurate) phrase that says, \u201cThe cloud is just someone else\u2019s computer\u201d. The cloud abstracts and simplifies the complexity of managing the infrastructure mentioned above. Instead of thinking about servers, you think of services and instances of services.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In the modern infrastructure world, when a database is struggling, you add another instance.<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If you have so many database and application instances that you\u2019ve lost track of what\u2019s happening, add another service or three for that, too.<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"inarticle-wrapper channel-cta\">\n<div class=\"ica-text\">\n<p class=\"ica-text__title\">TNW Conference &#8211; The 2025 Agenda has just touched down<\/p>\n<p>Discover the insightful and dare we say controversial sessions that will take place June 19-20.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Taking this abstraction to an extreme, \u201cserverless\u201d has reached its peak popularity in the past few years. This approach aims to reduce servers and services to something more like a function call. Of course, a server still handles all these function calls and responses behind the scenes, but the argument is that you shouldn\u2019t need to worry about that and should only focus on sending and receiving data.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">More than 20 years later, web-based application developers\u2019 lives are surely easier, aren\u2019t they?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">No, not really. There are many issues with developing and maintaining apps that run in the cloud. Thankfully, several European operators are trying to make developers\u2019 lives easier again.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Before getting to them, here\u2019s a quick terminology guide.<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Private cloud<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">: Services used by only one customer.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><b>Public cloud<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">: Services shared by more than one customer.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In both cases, customer data and details remain private, and everything could run in one or more locations. The main difference is that the provider carves out a digital tranche of territory just for that customer. This is probably defined in software, but it could be in hardware, and it could be a dedicated server running remotely or locally to the customer.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">With that in mind, let\u2019s dig into the problems in the cloud computing world.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"The_cloud_is_consolidated_and_monopolised\"><\/span>The cloud is consolidated and monopolised<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Cloud computing has hundreds of providers, yet most people only think of three: <span id=\"urn:enhancement-90998fac-7213-4822-b269-6abcf731fd09\" class=\"textannotation disambiguated wl-thing\" itemid=\"https:\/\/data.thenextweb.com\/tnw\/entity\/amazon\">Amazon Web Services<\/span> (AWS), <span id=\"urn:enhancement-e4aa21c4-5f5f-4a32-888c-75e4933eeaa8\" class=\"textannotation disambiguated wl-thing\" itemid=\"https:\/\/data.thenextweb.com\/tnw\/entity\/microsoft_2\">Microsoft Azure<\/span> (Azure), and Google Cloud Platform (GCP) \u2014 known as the \u201chyperscalers\u201d of the hosting industry. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The web is a big place, brimming with publicly and privately available sites, so precise numbers of what runs where are hard to come by. However, according to statistics from <\/span><a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/trends.builtwith.com\/websitelist\/Amazon\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">builtwith.com<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, about 12% of websites \u2014 approximately 86.8 million in total \u2014 run on AWS. The other two \u201conly\u201d host roughly another 12% combined. If you look at hosting companies that call themselves \u201ccloud\u201d, then according to <\/span><a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/techjury.net\/blog\/how-many-websites-run-on-aws\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">techjury.net<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> these percentages increase to 32% for AWS, 23% for Azure, and 10% for GCP.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yet with these statistics, defining what constitutes a website is complicated. Hyperscalers offer hundreds of different services that developers use for one or more parts of an application, some of which perform crucial functions that break an application if unavailable.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This has caused problems in the past. Remember the various times when large amounts of online services were unavailable? That was probably due to one of these major companies experiencing an outage. This has led to many developers taking a multi-cloud or hybrid-cloud approach with their applications, spreading risk by hosting services across multiple providers. This solves a technical issue but brings more revenue to all cloud providers and increases complexity.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This consolidation puts a tremendous amount of power into a handful of companies. If they change their policies, thousands of businesses could be left without a place to run. More concerning is that all of the top three \u2014 in fact, all of the top five \u2014 are US companies, except for Alibaba, based in China. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The US already has <\/span><a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/noyb.eu\/en\/us-cloud-soon-illegal-trump-punches-first-hole-eu-us-data-deal\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">data privacy, security, and law enforcement policies<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> that concern many companies and jurisdictions<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, and while all the companies mentioned provide hosting options in a global variety of jurisdictions, what if politics in the US no longer respected these digital borders? No matter how unlikely some things can seem, consolidation is always dangerous.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"Diversifying_the_cloud\"><\/span>Diversifying the cloud<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Developers and their companies do not want to completely switch away from the cloud. Rather, they are looking for new options from the hyperscale hosts, especially in Europe, where there is a mixture of increased regulations and insecurity around using American services, alongside a degree of nationalism encouraging people to use European services.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">These trends create new global opportunities for alternative hosting providers, new and old, especially in Europe.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I spoke to three of the largest hosting providers in Europe to find out if they are noticing the same trends and what they think the next 20 years of web hosting might look like. Two of them \u2014 France\u2019s <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">OVH<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> (the host of around 4% of websites) and Germany\u2019s <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Hetzner<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> (around 5.5% of websites) \u2014\u00a0have existed since the late 1990s, before the web 2.0 revolution and \u201ccloud\u201d was a term. The third is the UK\u2019s <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Civo<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, which is just seven years old, but has founders with many more years of experience helping companies bring their applications to the internet.<\/span><\/p>\n<figure class=\"post-image post-mediaBleed aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1412434 js-lazy\" alt=\"Graphic of a cloud over buildings\" width=\"799\" height=\"533\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn0.tnwcdn.com\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/1\/files\/2025\/03\/14796090251_5d6467a59b_c.jpg\"\/><figcaption>European cloud providers are offering new approaches to hosting. Credit: <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ccpixs.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">ccPixs.com<\/a><\/figcaption><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1412434\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn0.tnwcdn.com\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/1\/files\/2025\/03\/14796090251_5d6467a59b_c.jpg\" alt=\"Graphic of a cloud over buildings\" width=\"799\" height=\"533\" srcset=\"\"\/><\/figure>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"The_cloud_hasnt_lived_up_to_its_promise\"><\/span>The cloud hasn\u2019t lived up to its promise<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As developers rushed to the cloud, it promised to make developing and running large, complex applications easier and more cost-effective. Anyone who has sat back to look at the myriad tools and processes they now have to use and maintain for a cloud-native application might wonder how true that is. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) <\/span><a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/landscape.cncf.io\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">landscape map<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> has become so large that other tools and working groups are needed to help people navigate it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">While the hosts of yesteryear would charge a reliable and steady amount per month, hyperscale cloud companies tend to charge by usage, which leads to unpredictable and spiky costs that are often hard to interpret and act upon. A recent report from <\/span><a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.cloudzero.com\/blog\/cloud-computing-statistics\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">cloudzero<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> states that more than 20% of respondents have no clear idea of their cloud costs, which can consist of thousands of rows of data. A <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">report from IT support firm AAG<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/aag-it.com\/the-latest-cloud-computing-statistics\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">found that<\/a> 82% of respondents find cloud spending challenging.<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\"\/><\/p>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"The_European_difference\"><\/span>The European difference<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">OVH, Hetzner, and Civo all said the interaction points to the hyperscalers have become overly complex, with too many layers of abstractions needed to get started. People are now accustomed to more user-friendly interfaces. If AWS arrived today with its byzantine UI, the service might struggle to attract as many users.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For Europe\u2019s cloud competitors, this presents an opportunity. \u201cWith everything we do, we put ourselves in the shoes of a user,\u201d said Dinesh Majrekar, CTO of Civo. \u201cBy using sensible defaults and clear cost indications, we aim to make it possible to scroll to the bottom of any form and create what you need.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Hetzner\u2019s approach is similar. As their spokesperson, Christian Fitz, told me, \u201cWe offer a straightforward user interface and an easy setup process, ideal for users who need cost-effective servers without complex administration.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"Cost_efficiency\"><\/span>Cost efficiency<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">One of the biggest motivations in the current climate is cutting costs. The move to the cloud promised to save users money, or at the least, ensure they only spend money on resources when needed, rather than pay for idle machines. However, as the AAG report mentioned earlier shows, companies are now paying more than ever for running services. Granted, actual usage is likely also increased. For many, the issue is the inconsistent monthly bills and the lack of transparency in the relationship between services, usage, and costs. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In recognition of how big this disconnect is, there\u2019s now an entire foundation, the <\/span><a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/a16z.com\/the-cost-of-cloud-a-trillion-dollar-paradox\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">FinOps foundation<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, dedicated to maximising the business value of the cloud, and <\/span><a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/opencost.io\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">OpenCost<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, an open-source tool that helps show the cost of infrastructure decisions, <\/span><a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/blog.kubecost.com\/blog\/opencost-cncf-incubation\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">was recently welcomed into the CNCF<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Around the time of KubeCon EU 2024, Broadcom had recently acquired VMWare and announced significant pricing changes. VMWare had been a popular option for running a private cloud, and while Broadcom rolled back some of the pricing changes, the experience caused many to look for more open and standards-based options for private cloud hosting. All three hosts emphasised the importance of allowing customers to switch between providers. The most controversial of these policies is charging for egress, i.e. the cost of moving data from a cloud service, which can make multi-cloud hosting prohibitively expensive.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">OVH has pledged not to apply these charges. Yaniv Fdida, the company\u2019s Chief Product and <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/technology\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"4\" title=\"Technology\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Technology<\/a> Officer, said, \u201cWe have no fees on egress or traffic in and out. The cloud should be free. This enables our customers to balance workloads and have free choice. This is part of our tagline, and as far as tools are concerned, we use open standards.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This is a growing trend amongst providers. As Majrekar notes, \u201cWe recently got rid of egress charges altogether. So that\u2019s something you don\u2019t have to worry about.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"A_trustworthy_cloud\"><\/span>A trustworthy cloud<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Perhaps due to anxieties about keeping valuable data in other territories, national pride, or regulatory reasons, European companies often look to alternatives to the hyperscale hosts.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For OVH, that provides a chance to offer a more trustworthy service.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As an older company, OVH runs its own data centres but also produces a lot of its own hardware in locations in Europe and North America. The <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">hyperscalers make a lot <\/span><a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aboutamazon.com\/news\/aws\/take-a-look-inside-the-lab-where-aws-makes-custom-chips\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">of their own hardware<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> too<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, but the only hosts I could find that make hardware in Europe are OVH and Hetzner. This creates what OVH calls the \u201ctrusted cloud\u201d, where they can guarantee higher data sovereignty thanks to knowledge of the supply chain behind the hardware that processes customer data.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This doesn\u2019t just lead to increased trust but also, as Fdida put it, an increased ability to innovate.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cBecause we are not tied to any third-party suppliers, we can really accelerate our time to market and our durability and longevity,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"A_less_wasteful_cloud\"><\/span>A less wasteful cloud<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">While the hyperscale hosts <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">rush to <\/span><a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.technologyreview.com\/2024\/09\/26\/1104516\/three-mile-island-microsoft\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">open power plants<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> to meet the high energy demands for generative AI applications, smaller hosts are taking different approaches. Sustainability is one area where European providers (and global providers\u2019 European operations) excel and have the potential to lead the world as other regions start to pull back from sustainability commitments.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Hetzner has made the issue a key selling point. As Fitz, their spokesperson, told me, \u201cOur commitment to environmentally friendly hosting spans many years; in Germany, we power our data centres exclusively with hydropower, and in Finland, we also use wind power. Hosting that aligns with sustainability goals is becoming increasingly important. \u201c<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Civo, meanwhile, partners with the <\/span><a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.civo.com\/carbon-neutral-gpu\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">UK\u2019s Deep Green<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> to run graphical processing units (GPUs) that many AI-heavy processes use. Deep Green uses multiple methods to reuse the heat that servers generate. For example, the company <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">submerges servers<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> in a special liquid<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, heating that water and using it for other purposes. While Deep Green already has 1,500 sites around the UK, it\u2019s unclear how many of these are used by Civo. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Deep Green and Civo aren\u2019t the only partners trying this idea in Europe. Swiss host <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Infomaniak does <\/span><a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.infomaniak.com\/en\/ecology\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">something similar<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. These projects are a great example of how Europe\u2019s typically denser cities can use colocation.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">One aspect of making sustainable data centres that is often missed is the embedded carbon in buying and decommissioning servers. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">OVH has addressed this by <\/span><a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ovhcloud.com\/en\/about-us\/sustainable-cloud\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">recycling and reusing<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> much of its hardware, keeping older machines running for less intensive use cases.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"The_future_of_the_cloud\"><\/span>The future of the cloud<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Looking back over nearly 30 years of web hosting, you can see many changes in demands, requirements, and ways the industry handles them. If the sudden surge in demand for new AI tools is anything to judge by, it\u2019s hard to make predictions.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Fdida thinks the next challenge for providers will be quantum computing.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201c\u200aQuantum will drastically change the way we look at workloads,\u201d he said. \u201cWe are a pioneer in Europe and have been delivering simulators of quantum computing in our cloud for the last two years. And we have a real one hosted in our facilities with a company. We believe that it takes time to materialise how quantum can disrupt completely because it\u2019s a new paradigm of looking at computing, right?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Another issue for the future will be complexity. Mark Boost of Civo hopes that moving forward will also mean a return to simpler times.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cBefore the cloud, you had hosting companies, you had FTP, and you could just move between providers,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cAmazon pretty much defined this new market in the early days and has created this world of complexity, which means that freedom of movement is so difficult. I\u2019d love to see us get to that place, and I think the future will be that.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<blockquote><p><strong><span style=\"color: #ff6600;\">If you liked the article, do not forget to share it with your friends. Follow us on\u00a0<span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><a style=\"color: #ff0000;\" href=\"https:\/\/news.google.com\/publications\/CAAqBwgKMN63nwsw68G3Aw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">Google News<\/a><\/span>\u00a0too, click on the star and choose us from your favorites.<\/span><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>If you want to read more like this article, you can visit our <span style=\"color: #ff9900;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/category\/technology\/\" target=\"_blank\" >Technology category.<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"color: black;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/thenextweb.com\/news\/european-cloud-alternative-to-aws-azure-and-gcp\" target=\"_blank\" >Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When the modern-day internet began emerging in the early 2000s, finding hosting services and resources to run the new wave of dynamic web applications was hard. You needed a database to store application data. These were slow, expensive, and unreliable, regularly bringing applications to a grinding halt when a single instance failed. 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