US cloud giants dominate Europe’s digital infrastructure. In this session, Fedir Kompaniiets of Gart Solutions looks at the risks of that dependence, the European alternatives already available, and how different organisations, from SMBs to public bodies and regulated enterprises, can build cloud independence without giving up performance.
Published: 8 May 2025
Who it is for: Business and technology leaders in Europe reviewing their cloud strategy for compliance, cost and resilience.
Key takeaways
- The four main risks of relying on US providers: US access to European data, dependence on a single provider, unstable pricing and geopolitical risk.
- Using the cloud is not the same as owning it: Europe has high cloud adoption but limited control over the infrastructure, which is the sovereignty gap.
- Cloud strategy should start with risk analysis (risk appetite, regulatory requirements and technical maturity), not with choosing a provider.
- Four steps to independence: diversify the cloud stack, classify workloads by sensitivity, ensure portability with containers and infrastructure as code, and invest in skilled teams or partners.
- European providers offer fewer managed services, so high availability and failover must be designed by your team, but they can be significantly cheaper.
Timestamps
- 0:01 Four risks of relying on US cloud providers
- 1:06 Case studies: when legal and political conflicts reach the cloud
- 2:12 Legal differences between EU and US data access
- 3:18 Cloud adoption in Europe and the sovereignty gap
- 4:25 AI and the question of jurisdiction
- 5:28 European initiatives: Gaia-X and the sovereign cloud vision
- 7:38 Hyperscalers vs local providers
- 8:42 Case study: a manufacturing SaaS chooses Hetzner
- 9:48 Start with risk analysis
- 12:00 Four steps to cloud independence
- 16:21 Why a multi-cloud strategy matters
- 17:27 Cloud resilience for SMBs, public sector and enterprises
- 28:18 The big picture: control, not isolation
- 30:28 The first step: audit your data
- 33:41 Q&A
Speakers
Fedir Kompaniiets, CEO and Co-founder, Gart Solutions
Related resources
- Cloud independence: when it makes business sense
- Digital Sovereignty in Europe: Sovereign Cloud Requirements
- Mastering multi-cloud management
- IT audit services
Want to discuss how this applies to your infrastructure?
Talk to our team, or browse all Gart Solutions webinars.
