We’ve awarded a €180M tender for sovereign cloud to four European providers.

[pa27@mastodon.social]

@HennaVirkkunen And yet, at the same time there's this opposite ugly item:
https://mastodon.social/@pojntfx/116418696334944957

[jim@social.openrightsgroup.org]

@fenixmaster @compfu @HennaVirkkunen Thales operate a "sovereign" Google cloud (licenced, to create legal distance, but obviously not sovereign as in publicly owned / controlled)

[ikuturso@mastodon.social]

@oaj @HennaVirkkunen "Post Telecom with its partners CleverCloud and OVHcloud, StackIT, Scaleway, and finally Proximus, which partners with S3NS (a joint venture of Thales and Google Cloud), Clarence and Mistral"

[simonhunter@mastodon.social]

@HennaVirkkunen @hughbric look!

[max@toet.dnzm.nl]

@jim So, not sovereign.

@fenixmaster @compfu @HennaVirkkunen

[skua@mastodon.social]

@HennaVirkkunen
Looks like value for money compared to taxpayers here being scalped by Accenture Australia & others for AUD +$97 million for a joke upgrade of IT at the meteorological department / Bureau Of Meteorology / BOM.

(But don't worry, Accenture Australia will redesign the government's climate change risk website too, so they'll be ok.
And #AndrewJohnson, former CEO, has a #PSM.)
#AusPol #BOMWebsite #AccentureAustralia #ConsequenceFree #RipOff #BOMMismanagement

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11-23/bureau-of-meteorology-new-website-cost-blowout-to-96-million/106042202

[dataknightmare@mastodon.xyz]

@HennaVirkkunen
this is good. Now you should have a nice talk with the guys who made the European Age Verification App.
"Talk" in the sense of chasing them outside of the territory with a large stick.

[statsguy@mas.to]

@HennaVirkkunen Excellent news! Freeing Europe from US Big Tech sounds like exactly the sort of thing the EU should be doing.

Thank you!

[shadowdancer@mstdn.social]

@jim
So I assume Cloud Act applies here? If so, fuck that. Half measures as always.
@fenixmaster @compfu @HennaVirkkunen

[imprinted@mastodon.uno]

@jim @fenixmaster @compfu @HennaVirkkunen
So paying the bribe to big tech with our money.

[kevinrns@mstdn.social]

@HennaVirkkunen

And if we check ownership etc. these aren't US subsidiary companies?

[superblox@mastodon.social]

@HennaVirkkunen How does the "sovereign" bit work when Google Cloud is involved? Will it be Google operating servers in Europe that are still subject to American intelligence agencies?

[aspragg@ohai.social]

@TheNerdAutomaton @HennaVirkkunen

Wait, Google? I thought the European sovereign cloud programme was just an AWS instance?

European Sovereign Cloud

Amazon Web Services, Inc. (aws.eu)

Or is this the American tech giants flooding the zone, and making it hard to talk about public infrastructure without half the people in the discussion thinking that someone else had already decided to use American tech for the role, even when the impetus for the project is *to get away from American tech*?

How do we/policymakers resist this?

[matv1@mastodon.social]

@HennaVirkkunen
Interesting to see #proximus winning this tender partnering with #google (through S3NS), while Proximus only a month ago, announcing AWS as prefered worldwide supplier of cloud-infra and AI.

I'm sure their layers have done expert work shielding their deep Google and Amazon ties from this tender.
Nevertheless this looks a lot like souvereignity-washing to me.