How European CISOs are driving increased IT security investment

The chief information security officer (CISO) role has gained new importance, due to increased cyber threats. Moreover, the COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on security-related IT investment in Europe, which will continue to grow rapidly in 2021.

During the pandemic, organisations have been re-architecting their IT security perimeters to protect operations and critical data. The pandemic, and measures to curb it with remote working, have pushed the enterprise network...

16 April 2021 | CIO

Google Cloud opens Warsaw region in first step to central and eastern Europe expansion

Google Cloud's cloud data centre region in Warsaw, Poland is now open for business - 18 months after it was first announced.

The opening marks Google Cloud's 25th location worldwide, and the first cloud region in central and eastern Europe.

Partnership details were first unveiled in September 2019 as Google aligned with Poland's national cloud operator, Chmura Krajowa. The announcement today (April 14), made at a virtual press conference in keeping with the times,...

14 April 2021 | Data Centres

OVH Strasbourg data centre destroyed by fire, customers told to activate DR

Updated OVHcloud has declared a 'major incident' at one of its Strasbourg (SBG2) data centres, with the company confirming a fire and telling customers to activate their disaster recovery (DR) plans.

Octave Klaba, founder of OVH, confirmed in a tweet that 'everybody [was] safe', and that damage examination and reports in the SBG1, SBG3 and SBG4 sites remained ongoing.

An update was posted on the OVH dashboard at 2342 UTC which read: "We have detected a degradation in...

10 March 2021 | Data Centres

Atos and OVHcloud team up as European cloud race gains pace

Atos and OVHcloud have announced a strategic partnership to 'create a trusted, 100% European cloud solution' - in another sign of Europe-based vendors looking to stronger data sovereignty and security.

The two companies, who both signed up to an initiative last week to make data centres in Europe climate neutral by 2030, will offer a 'market-leading multi-cloud solution.'

This will involve combining OVHcloud's expertise in cloud solutions based on sovereign...

26 January 2021 | Data & Analytics

AWS, Google Cloud, Equinix among Europe climate neutral data centre pact founders

Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud and Equinix are among the founding members of a new initiative to make data centres in Europe climate neutral by 2030.

The Climate Neutral Data Centre Pact, alongside the Self Regulatory Initiative, has been formed by 25 companies and 17 associations in what is described as 'an historic and unprecedented commitment by an industry to proactively lead the transition to a climate neutral economy.'

The move comes one year after the...

21 January 2021 | AWS

Gaia-X ‘like King Canute stopping an incoming tide’ as European clouds struggle, analyst warns

An analyst has warned that efforts from European cloud providers to wrest market share from US-based hyperscalers is 'like King Canute attempting to stop an incoming tide'.

John Dinsdale, a chief analyst at Synergy Research Group, said that initiatives such as Gaia-X, a collaboration between the European Commission (EC), Germany, France, and various organisations within the continent, were 'laudable'.

Yet figures from Synergy show that while, since 2017, the European...

15 January 2021 | Data & Analytics

Microsoft and Deutsche Telekom expand partnership for high performance cloud

Microsoft and Deutsche Telekom (DT) are extending their collaboration to 'help customers of all sizes accelerate their cloud transformation initiatives.'

The two companies have agreed a seven-year partnership to bolster the telco's cloud acceleration. Deutsche Telekom plans to make the majority of its internal IT workloads public cloud-based by 2025, and Microsoft will train 'thousands' of DT employees as part of the new initiative.

Deutsche Telekom customers will also...

14 December 2020 | Enterprise

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