Your data. Your infrastructure. Your rules.
It's time to break free from hyperscaler dependence.
Three US corporations control roughly two-thirds of the global cloud infrastructure market. AWS at ~30%, Azure at ~20%, Google at ~13%. Your data leaves Europe. Your costs spiral. Your architecture becomes hostage to their roadmap, their pricing, and their politics.
GDPR means nothing when your data sits on servers controlled by companies subject to US jurisdiction. Data stored with a US-headquartered cloud provider — even on European soil — is subject to American laws and government access. European regulation can't protect what American law can compel.
Empowers US authorities to demand data from US companies regardless of where the data resides. European businesses using AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud can be compelled — via the provider — to hand over data to US agencies without informing the customer, potentially violating EU privacy mandates.
Permits warrantless surveillance of non-US persons' communications. If your cloud provider is American, your European users' data is a valid target. No warrant needed. No notification required.
Microsoft abruptly suspended the cloud email accounts of the International Criminal Court's chief prosecutor and staff — an international body based in The Hague — after the US government sanctioned ICC officials. A US-based provider prioritized US policy demands, cutting off critical services to non-US users overnight. The Dutch government accelerated plans to seek non-Microsoft, EU-hosted alternatives.
In 2023, EU authorities fined Meta a record €1.2 billion for transferring EU user data to the US in violation of data protection rules. The Schrems II ruling invalidated the EU-US data sharing agreement. A potential "Schrems III" challenge looms if US surveillance practices aren't reined in.
EU citizens deserve EU infrastructure. Not a marketing label. Not an "EU region" operated by a US parent company. Real, sovereign infrastructure governed by European law from the ground up.
They make it easy to get in and impossible to get out. Every proprietary service you adopt is another bar on the cage.
Applications deeply integrated with one platform face high redevelopment costs to move elsewhere. Lambda, DynamoDB, Cosmos DB — your code doesn't just run on their cloud, it can only run on their cloud. Long-term contracts and committed-spend discounts make it financially painful to switch early.
AWS charges ~$0.09 per GB to transfer data out. Your own data, held hostage behind a toll gate. The UK CMA found that egress fees create a lock-in effect by raising the cost of switching, reducing customers' ability to multi-source and discouraging rivals from competing. Your data checks in, but doesn't check out without paying.
37signals reported saving millions by leaving AWS, after discovering that owning infrastructure was cheaper for their steady workloads. Enterprises like GEICO saw 50%+ cost reductions for repatriated workloads. The "economies of scale" pitch falls apart when you look at the actual bill.
Over time, teams become proficient only with a specific cloud's tools and certifications. Shifting to a different provider requires retraining and complex integration work — another soft barrier keeping you exactly where they want you.
"Shared responsibility" is a polite way of saying: when something goes wrong, it's your fault. When something goes right, it's their product. Meanwhile, 75% of European publicly listed companies rely on American tech providers for primary services, and 95% of UK banking and telecom runs on US-based cloud.
A major AWS outage cascaded globally, knocking out thousands of websites and apps for hours. Banking systems, government portals, Snapchat, Slack, Zoom — all down across Europe, the US, and beyond. In the UK, even the tax agency's website went offline. As Dr. Corinne Cath-Speth of Article 19 put it: "We urgently need diversification in cloud computing. The infrastructure underpinning democratic discourse cannot be dependent on a handful of companies."
AWS runs Amazon. Azure runs Microsoft. GCP runs Google. They compete with their own customers while holding the keys to their infrastructure. When do their interests and yours diverge?
That's not a fringe opinion — it's from a Dutch parliamentary report in 2025, urging a halt to any "thoughtless migrations to American hyperscalers" and calling for national cloud alternatives to safeguard digital sovereignty. In some European sectors, critical infrastructure is virtually 100% reliant on US tech.
Certifications and badges don't equal security. They equal paperwork. Real security comes from control — control over your stack, your data, and your incident response. You can't audit what you can't see. Hyperscalers give you dashboards, not transparency.
This isn't about going backwards. It's about choosing forward on your own terms. EU-based. Open. Transparent. Actually yours.
Providers headquartered in Europe, governed by European law, not subject to US CLOUD Act or FISA orders. France's Cloud de Confiance and Germany's Sovereign Cloud initiatives are leading the way. The EU is moving toward cloud certification (EUCS) requiring top-tier services to be fully EU-sovereign.
Kubernetes, S3-compatible storage, standard SQL databases, open APIs. European providers often offer compatibility with existing APIs and open-source platforms, lowering switching costs. Your workload should run anywhere, not just on one vendor's proprietary stack.
A distributed strategy using multiple providers reduces single points of failure. If one provider has an outage or a political mandate hits, core operations continue. Hybrid and multi-cloud approaches keep critical data with a trusted local cloud while using global services where they make sense.
Talk to humans, not ticket systems. Work with providers who know your name, understand your architecture, and pick up the phone when things break. Diversifying creates competitive pressure that drives better pricing, innovation, and service quality.
This isn't opinion. It's documented.