Should we abandon AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, and go all-in on European Cloud providers? Are there European Cloud providers that are up to the task? Well, as always, it depends. No European Cloud provider can compete in all areas of these three big use Cloud hyperscalers. But, they do not need to. They need to be good enough, or even better, in some key areas, including:
- simplicity
- pricing models and predictability
- trust and support
- documentation
- community
In addition, you probably do not require a one-stop shop for (almost) all your compute needs. You will need enough support for at least the major building blocks you require, and the ability to either build, buy, integrate what is not provided as a service directly.
In the text below I will mainly refer to AWS, although I believe this is also applicable to Azure, and perhaps also Google Cloud.
Simplicity
AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud are all complex beasts - the level of growth they have experienced over just a handfull of years has made that close to inevitable. There are many smaller cloud providers that provides a simpler experience, regardless of country of origin. The fear can be that they may be too simple, and it would be safer to go with a hyperscaler, which by all accounts are good at handling organisations much larger than your own.
But, handling a large scale organisation needs well is not the same as handling organisations well at all scales.
Even though I have worked with building cloud-based solutions primarily in AWS for the past 10 years, I would not necessarily pick AWS for many solutions. Many cases would suffice with a simpler platform, instead of building, maintaining or buying that simplicity on top of AWS.
It is great for all consultancies that can sell services with their AWS expertise, within a certain area of AWS. It is not necessarily the best for the customer.
Understanding the boundaries of the cloud provider offerings are important.
Both in terms of what it can do, what it allows you to do, and what it actually helps you with.
Pricing models and predictability
The pricing models of AWS services are in many cases quite complex. There are often too many dimensions to consider, and not clear what the bottom line will be.
There are of course knowledge and understanding of the services and their pricing models that would steer you in a suitable direction. But after some hopefully educated work, you still have to try and run it and see what the cost will be.
Especially cost dimensions that go across services, like data transfer costs, can complicate matters.
Pricing models and architecture go hand in hand. There needs to be a balance of relatively simple price models that humans can understand, without being too blunt to exclude trying out many use cases.
This is a great opportunity for many smaller cloud providers to be better than the big ones.
Trust and support
Can you trust the cloud provider to uphold their end of the bargain?
This is the area which may trigger discussions of migrating from a major cloud provider, like AWS, to a smaller European cloud provider.
You will not have that trust in place from the start. Trust takes time to earn.
A new cloud provider may have the necessary regularatory requirements. They may have good customer testimonies - which have to be reviewed in context.
In the end, you will have to build a (business) relation here, hopefully one that is mutually beneficial. If you can do that, you are likely in a good spot.
Documentation
Good documentation is hard. You have to know who you are writing for and where they are in their journey. This can mean documenting the same thing in multiple ways.
I have a love/hate relationship with AWS documentation, perhaps a bit more hate than love. The love part is that in many cases there at least decent reference documentation. But far too often, there are massive amounts of documentation that does not help me solve my problem. It forces me to jump back and forth between different sections in the documentation, and may have an unarticulated context that it assumes I have.
A cloud provider that enables good reference documentation and documentation adressing different needs with a clear target audience, can be a winnder here. Note also that I write enables here. All this documentation would not necessarily be written by the cloud provider itself, but they should in that case encourage and support 3rd party contributions, and make those easier to find.
Community
For me, community involves much of the interaction between people that are not a direct communication between the cloud provider and their customer. Thus, it is customers talking with each other sharing experiences, asking questions. It is people blogging, making videos, going to conferences, and in other ways sharing information and learning.
Big cloud providers like AWS and Azure will win in terms of sheer volume here.
However, I think that an important part of a community is that it feels inclusive and welcoming. It should be ok to ask for help, and it should feel rewarding to provide help and experience.
The community does not necessarily have to be large for that, in fact it can be easier in smaller communities. But, the cloud provider should be in support of that community, without trying to control it.
Final words
For me, I think the consideration of using a European Cloud provider is not only about the data location and privacy concerns for this data, even though that is very important for the business.
The cloud providers you choose are important partners to your business, and ideally that should also be viewed as a partnership as well.
Does your company have 5 developers or 5000? Do you work on global scale in multiple countries or continents, or mainly in one or two regions?
Finding a cloud provider that better suites your company size in terms of your partnership could be better than just go for the one with the largest presence.