Europe’s efforts to free itself from the domination of US cloud platforms have reached an important first milestone with the announcement of the Sovereign European Cloud API (SECA).
A collaboration between European providers Aruba and IONOS, and cloud marketplace Dynamo, the SECA API is being positioned as a building block in the continent’s larger EuroStack initiative, an ambitious project to challenge the economic domination and standards-setting power of mainly US tech companies and hyperscalers.
Today’s cloud is often inconvenient. Large cloud platforms lack interoperability, which leads to data silos as well as increasing costs when data is moved around. The complaint is that this lack of interoperability leads to vendor lock-in, where organizations get stuck inside discrete platforms.
The result is that life is harder for organizations adopting a hybrid cloud or multicloud approach. The suspicion is that large cloud platforms — read US hyperscalers — aren’t in any hurry to address this issue.
SECA addresses the interoperability issue head on, claiming to make it easier for rival cloud providers to offer customers the ability to run applications and workloads across different clouds.
It does this, its backers said, while removing the problem of lock-in and remaining compliant with European rules on data sovereignty, AI, and data protection.
“AI and Cloud are transforming the global economy, and Europe cannot afford to be left behind. Europe needs a strong, sovereign digital ecosystem. SECA is a critical step in building a secure, independent, and future-proof digital infrastructure — one that keeps Europe strong, competitive, and in control,” IONOS CEO Achim Weiss said in a statement about the project’s launch.
This was echoed by Aruba CEO Stefano Cecconi: “The creation of these common APIs — with Aruba and IONOS as first movers — marks a pivotal and voluntary step for the European cloud industry towards enhanced interoperability, strengthening the continent’s cloud services ecosystem.”
SECA is also a critical building block for the emerging EuroStack initiative, an attempt to carve out alternatives to the standards and technologies that cement US tech domination across multiple fields from microprocessors to computing standards.
Not long ago, EuroStack would have been viewed as worthy but unlikely to go anywhere quickly, not least because of its estimated €300 billion ($325 billion) cost. Europe seemed too competitive and fragmented to get its act together. But a few weeks of US President Donald Trump’s second term of office has changed that. Suddenly, US tech domination is no longer viewed as entirely benign.
“There is a growing desire among European organizations to have data sovereignty. There are concerns for the growing dependance on non-European cloud providers, and if you combine that with the current political climate, you have a strong case for SECA being adopted,” said Jason Wingate of Emerald Ocean Ltd which , as a Canadian company, could also have an interest in reducing its reliance on US technology vendors.
However, SECA still faces formidable obstacles: “The biggest challenge will be legal,” said Wingate. “The EU is a patchwork of national laws and regulations. It’s going to be complicated to navigate this and still be EU compliant, all the while being compliant with nation-level data and privacy laws.”
For cloud providers, security won’t be far behind as a concern, he said: “On paper is one thing, but the real test for adoption will be how secure it is. It can pass all the regulations and paperwork in the world, but if it’s insecure, no one will adopt it.”
The proof will be in the speed of SECA’s uptake. If European providers take to it, this could give smaller European companies an edge over the larger hyperscalers that dominate the market today.
Proprietary initiatives such as Microsoft’s EU Data Boundary overlap with some of the SECA’s aims. However, the two initiatives are otherwise very different. SECA is about broad data interoperability whereas Microsoft’s EU Data Boundary is about making it less tortuous for its customers to comply with the EU’s complex rules on data residency.
One is trying to foment an independence movement while the other is more of a convenience for people already inside Microsoft’s tent.
“Microsoft is centralized and proprietary. SECA is unproven but is open and offers greater flexibility,” said Wingate.
Source:: Network World