Google Cloud and OVHcloud team up for European ‘trusted cloud solution’ partnership

Google Cloud and OVHcloud have announced a strategic partnership to help European organisations with cloud data security - as issues around data sovereignty and privacy rumble on.

The two companies intend to 'build joint solutions that empower customers to draw all the benefits of a multi-cloud and open approach, as well as drive a critical ecosystem of third-party developers', in their own words. In practice, OVHcloud will launch a new hosted private cloud offering by utilising...

10 November 2020 | Data Management

How IONOS is looking towards privacy and Europe for a solid share of the cloud market

The hyperscale providers continue to dominate the cloud infrastructure and hosting market. According to industry watcher Synergy Research in May, the combined market share of Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft and Google alone was 56%.

Yet one area has the potential to cause concern - and it has pricked the ears of other players looking to capitalise.

In August, CloudTech reported on the ending of the Privacy Shield agreement by the European Court of Justice (ECJ). The...

6 November 2020 | Data Sovereignty

AWS announces Switzerland data centre region with 2022 launch date

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has announced the launch of a data centre region in Switzerland, joining its rivals in the country and taking its total number of geographic regions to 24.

The Switzerland region, which will be called AWS Europe (Zurich) and is slated to open in the second half of 2022, will consist of three availability zones and marks AWS' eighth European country where it has a presence. The company already has regions in France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Sweden, and the...

2 November 2020 | AWS

Microsoft unveils Greece data centre initiative, continues European expansion

Microsoft has announced it is building new data centres in Greece as part of a new digital transformation initiative - representing the next step in its European expansion.

The 'GR for GRowth' initiative - capitalisation theirs - will help establish a Microsoft cloud region in Greece, as well as a comittment to train up approximately 100,000 people in digital technologies by 2025.

The build will include the usual trinkets of Azure, Microsoft 365 and Dynamics 365....

5 October 2020 | Data & Analytics

Deutsche Telekom and OVHcloud team up for Gaia-X – as Macron says Europe must resume cloud battle

French cloud and hosting provider OVHcloud and T-Systems, a subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom, have announced a cooperation to create a 'trusted public cloud offering' for Germany, France, and other European markets.

The two companies will contribute to the Gaia-X initiative, a collaboration between the European Commission (EC), Germany, France, and various organisations within the continent.

The proposed offering will 'address the specific needs of the public sector as...

15 September 2020 | Data Management

The next steps for the EU and US post-Privacy Shield: How can Europe win the digital race?

Opinion It has been seven years since Edward Snowden exposed the level of surveillance by US intelligence agencies that one might have rather expected from totalitarian countries. Petabytes of private or company data – no matter from which country – are made available to US authorities by default without suspect or a court decision.

While little is known publicly about current practice, it would certainly be more than surprising if the powers and capabilities of the US...

19 August 2020 | Data Sovereignty

Privacy Shield ruling could lead to dark clouds ahead for hyperscalers, advocates warn

The ending of the Privacy Shield agreement by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) could have serious ramifications for the major hyperscale cloud providers, according to privacy activists.

Privacy Shield is an EU-US agreement which 'provides companies on both sides of the Atlantic with a mechanism to comply with data protection requirements in support of transatlantic commerce', in the words of the framework's website statement.

Max Schrems, a leading privacy advocate,...

7 August 2020 | Data & Analytics

Google Cloud and Orange team up as cloud-telco cauldron continues to bubble

Google Cloud and Orange have announced a strategic partnership utilising edge computing and artificial intelligence (AI) among others as Google's European cloud expansion continues.

The deal, while under the partnership banner, can be seen more as another customer win chalked up for Google. Google will help 'accelerate the transformation of Orange's IT infrastructure and the development of future cloud services, in particular edge computing', according to the press...

29 July 2020 | Applications

Nordic enterprises moving to multi-cloud strategies, says ISG report

Enterprises in the Nordic region are increasingly turning to multi-cloud strategies and seeking help from cloud and data centre providers to achieve their business goals, according to a new report.

The study, from Information Services Group (ISG), looks more towards managed service providers (MSPs), hyperconverged and colocation service providers rather than the likelier public cloud infrastructure giants. As a result, companies such as Basefarm, a Norway-based MSP acquired by...

20 July 2020 | Adoption

Google Cloud and Telefónica partner for Spanish digitisation – with more cloud and telco convergence

Google Cloud has announced a new partnership with Telefónica to advance digital transformation in Spain as well as 5G mobile edge use cases.

The agreement will see Google Cloud launching a new cloud region in Spain - although this has yet to be ratified with Google Cloud's global locations map - which will leverage Telefónica's Madrid region infrastructure.

Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet, noted the current situation as a marker for bringing this partnership...

11 June 2020 | Europe