back to article European Commission: Cloud will save us from economic doom

The European Commission is to create cloud computing standards across its 27 member states to spur customer adoption and boost local economies. Cloud has already been hyped to death in the commercial world and now the EC is adding to the marketing bluster. It said in its new strategy document – "Unleashing the potential of …

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  1. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

    You just gotta lhave a laugh at the arrogance at their expectation of ignorance

    The European Commission to set standards, whenever everyone knows they are a self-serving autonomous body plundering booty from nations?

    FFS ... Do me a favour and pull the other one .... it's got bells on it. Or is that an unfair and unkind observation which does not stand up to the rigours of truth and investigation?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: You just gotta lhave a laugh at the arrogance at their expectation of ignorance

      The European Commission exists for only one reason. to justify spending ever more of our money on ever more civil servants, so the commission can get ever bigger. It's the biggest cancer in the EU.

    2. LarsG
      Meh

      ONCE BUREAUCRATS

      Once bureaucrats get involved three things will definately happen,

      1. It will take 20 years before they can agree on a standard.

      2. It will cost more than the entire GDP of Greece.

      3. They will line their pockets with tax payers money and call it expenses.

  2. K
    Big Brother

    "Obstacles preventing biz customers "

    Is that the CEO and Compliance position?

    Now please get HP ask the IT Teams who would have to manage it.. you can then add

    Actual Cost

    Uptime

    Support

  3. Dazed and Confused

    Not: An emotive response perhaps...

    Customers want the data to be stored in the UK?

    There are many practical reasons why businesses would want the data stored in the UK. Firstly it would then be subject to UK law, so if anything went wrong they could deal with local legal services rather than trying to sue an overseas provider in their own native courts, where being a foreigner could be seen as being rather like walking around with a sign saying "kick me" painted on their backs.

    But getting away from business reasons and concentrating on technical matters. A key factor in cloud based storage solutions is always going to be latency. Now I wouldn't put it past the EU to declare that the limiting data transmission to the speed of light is illegal, but in the real world distance == time. The further away your data is, the slower your access to it will be. If the data moves to the US for example access will cost you best part of 100ms for the East Coast and over 150 for the West. This can't be avoided. So performance is going to suffer.

  4. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
    Devil

    Oh my

    What happened to the "digital/knowledge economy" effort of 2000 or so?

    Stuck an obstacle, infected with bubonic plague, tanked, sunk, dead while eurocrats now have houses in rather nice locations, I reckon.

    So they are prepping the launch of another ship of foolish hope.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    EU To Kill Cloud?

    Well there it goes then - any hope that the cloud is going to be more than a passing IT trend has just been thrown on the boulders.

    EU to set standards... EU to kill it off?

    Now I have to start proposing a list of standards that need to go in there just for the sheer hell of it:

    - It must be "greenish-purple" in colour?

    - It must be more than 4 linguini long, but smaller than 2 double decker buses and occupy less than 1 olympic swimming pool in size (but more space than 34 sheep)?

    - Access to the UI must be in Esperanza?

    - No edge to the cloud shall be straight but cannot curve more than a banana?

    - It mustnt contain lead or other toxic chemicals?

    Must get on the phone to an MEP...

    1. Phil O'Sophical Silver badge
      Stop

      Re: EU To Kill Cloud?

      Don't worry. This is the EU stardards world. There will be an EU standard, a French standard, an incompatible de-facto standard that the real world will use, and an opt-out so that the UK can do things properly.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    Eurotwats

    Hey! Eurotwats! Copy Britain, where this sort of thing has been SUCH a success in ensuring full employment, and delivering quality services that people really want to use.

    Create millions of jobs? Who are they kidding? The purpose of the term cloud is to obscure the basic fact that this is technology to support the offshoring of IT and mid level white collar jobs to the the armpits of the world. Yes, the buyer might, just might save a small percentage (most don't over the life of the contract), the vendor makes a big fat margin, and eliminates the capability to do the job in-house for the buyer, and the countries in which the buyer is active see good jobs exported to shit holes and done badly.

    Other than the shareholders of the vendors, nobody benefits. But that's what the EU mean by "developing local capability", or whatever.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I don't get it

    How will standards set by the EC do anything at all in the US and why does the US need a cloudy savior when the article states; "the EC has already lost out to the US and Asia in the tech revenue stakes". Or are you just capITalizing things randOmlY?

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Regulations always make business less, in numerous ways; no exceptions!

    Regulations cost extra time and money, limit choice, and reduce the incentive for people to start and continue businesses in more regulated areas.

    The EU mandarins still can't get it through their thick and arrogant heads that centralism and collectivism are abject failures, worse their final admission that EU was always intended to become a Federalist State which usurps all sovereignty from member states clearly shows that they are clinically insane psychopaths.

    1. Kieran
      Facepalm

      Re: Regulations always make business less, in numerous ways; no exceptions!

      Indeed. And it would be great if:

      a) There were NO regulations whatsoever on thing like privacy, data protection, data security. Because we all know businesses would TOTALLY prioritise them anyway out of the kindness of the Financial Director's heart.

      b) There wasn't a centralised European directive, so instead anyone working across Europe had to know and comply with 25 different sets of legislation drafted by slightly different career bureaucrats.

  9. MSPAlliance

    We do have a Cloud Standard !

    Great article. The International Association of Cloud & Managed Service Providers has had a certification AND standard that deals with the fundamentals of 3rd parties (MSPs and cloud providers) managing and being held accountable for data and IT assets belonging to their customers.

    More importantly, the standard is designed to take into account country specific cloud environments and laws. www.mspalliance.com/UCS if you want to read about the standard.

  10. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
    Alien

    Clouds - Now you see them, now you don't

    Sort like all those billions of bailout money last seen heading towards Greece, Spain, Portugal etc.

    EC = Extreemly Crap (at anything the try to do}

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Standards are fine, but...

    ...cloud computing isn't going to save anyone economically. Few people need cloud computing and even fewer will pay for it. It may have some use for enterprise but it's a exaggerated bad joke for consumers.

  12. All names Taken
    Paris Hilton

    Jolly good.

    Now we will all be able to sleep sweeter and more sweeter still on a night?

  13. Will Godfrey Silver badge
    Unhappy

    The bridge is out - Service disruption

    A tree across the line and whooping cowboys - Data security

    A tank with its gun pointing down the line - USA

    Yet still they tell the driver to go faster.

  14. Marco van Beek
    WTF?

    New Jobs?

    "2.5 million new jobs". What about the 3+ million old jobs that will get lost at the local level? This stuff doesn't create new jobs. If there wasn't a saving, nobody would do use, and the cheapest way of saving money is to save jobs. If we still used manual double-entry ledgers instead of accounts programs, there would be lots of jobs in accounting. But everything would cost a lot more, but then there would be lots more taxes raised so we wouldn't have to hand over so much, so would we actually notice the higher prices if our pockets still had the same cash in them at the end of the day?

  15. JimDarragh

    If the European Commission is to build trust in cloud services they need to veer away from the overpriced vendor lock in approach and allow businesses to take advantage of the technology they already have. There are cloud management platforms available now that are safe, secure, and interoperable with multiple technologies. Waiting around for vendors to develop or adopt any standards could hurt your business by being late to the party. Also, a cloud standard isn't likely to change how secure the cloud is and cybercrime techniques will evolve just as they always have. The fact is that end users are already using the cloud and exploiting the convenience, efficiency and time savings that it brings, storing information elsewhere beyond the control of the IT department. Businesses need to provide their workforce with a secure and convenient approach to the cloud today, and not wait until it’s too late.

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    It's sad...

    ...that the EU is so removed from reality on "the cloud". If they are banking on "the cloud" to create jobs and save anyone from anything, they are in for one Helleva big reality check.

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