Airbus Takes Flight from AWS

> using our European region

To be fair, it was always obvious to anyone with half a brain that "European region" from a US provider was fake-EU.

The problem is that PARIOT act, CLOUD act and everything else has gone from being a paper tiger to real and present danger. No longer a theoretical risk.

So even people willing to previously turn a blind eye to the crystal clear risks can no longer do so.

It is also no longer possible to trust those tasked with implementing it not to bow to political pressures.

A long time ago now, Microsoft (Azure) put up a fight when the US came calling for some data hosted in their "EU (Ireland) region". I think there is zero chance of them putting up a fight today if Donny boy picked up the phone to Satya .

And that's before we get to the example of a Texas court ordering Verisign to cut off the .com domain from a Dutch company.[1]

Sadly I have limited sympathy for a country that having witnessed Donny's first term thought "you know what, we'll have more of that" and voted accordingly.

[1] https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/news/releases/attorney-...

> I fear rough waters ahead.

For 2.5 more years.

Yes European GDP, especially buying power has been pretty flat over last decades. They simply cannot afford US made products anymore.

US Tech does understand, US Administration does not.

Why should they care? Shareholders > stakeholders.

Management listened to the siren call of "it's easier and cheaper".

Now they still have to pay for the same senior sysadmins they were told they wouldn't need anymore, but, with the added bonus of paying 10-1000x for bandwidth over what they could get if they had stayed on-prem.

Everyone went to "the cloud" because they want to make their IT problems someone else's problem. It's no different from the previous era of MSPs, except that there are now only, like, five MSPs in the world.

Note: I mean the Google Docs and Microsoft 365 type of cloud not the AWS and Azure type of cloud

> Why did Airbus go to "the cloud" in the first place?

The same reason that so many companies went to "the cloud", because the hyperscalers warpped the C-suite round their little finger.

There are two things any C-suite like doing that the hyperscalers could help them tick boxes on.

First, shifting capex to opex. They love doing that because of the accounting treatment. Opex goes into your P&L, so it reduces your taxable profit and therefore it reduces your tax bill. Meanwhile capex goes onto the balance sheet and is deprecated over the asset's life, so the "only" benefit you might get is to claim allowances (e.g. R&D) from your tax authority.

Second, it allows lots of things to be made "someone else's problem". Security ? Their problem. Staff ? Their problem. Tick-boxes to keep the compliance department happy ? Their problem.

So the hyperscalers can turn up and spin a ready-made story that the C-suite will lap up. Perhaps accompanied by a nice lunch and a round of golf. ;)

There is no doubt, companies such as Airbus have the technical competence and the financial means to do it all in-house. Sadly the C-suite calls the shots ....

> Is Airbus still using Google workspaces for mail? Nice vector for industrial espionage.

Whatever email provider they use, people will always be the ultimate vector, clicking links they shouldn't.

... is this a reverse Dropbox comment? Everyone up to COVID was treating companies not moving some infra to AWS like how hardware companies would be treated without a mockup humanoid to show around.

AWS were first and dominated.

Microsoft moved late with Azure, but as they had so many customers in B2B already with SQL Server and Office, that they soon grew market share. Google Cloud followed and acquired companies like Firebase to differentiate.

    Market Share 2026


    AWS 28%
    Azure 21%
    Google 14%

https://www.statista.com/chart/18819/worldwide-market-share-...

IME quite a lot of poor tech decisions come down to techies being too dogmatic in their beliefs[1].

Move to AWS? All techies want to add that to their CV so sure why not... Who cares if it's the best decision as long as the CVs get improved.

============================

[1] My personal bugbear are techies who are adamant that nothing but google chrome can be used by the regardless of the fact that when pressed they can't find a single site that doesn't work on FF. Usually the goalposts are moved at some point in the discussion from "sites don't work on FF" to performance even though FF with uBlock origin cuts actual downloading of ads to zero compared to the uBlock lite on chrome. They'll next complain about memory used in FF compared to google regardless of the lack of any measurements and even though these same techies are using bloated electron apps daily anyway!

As you can tell, this really is a personal bugbear of mine.

Mostly because they’re the defacto SaaS providing that niche product for your niche usecase. The breadth of AWS in incredible.

Smaller annual opex is far easier to get approved then large multiyear capex with deprecation.

AWS was also cheaper in the beginning but has been slowly ratcheting up the pricing making colocation or on-premise viable again for some workloads which have steady compute demands.

What do you see as the alternative for the purposes of this discussion? Are we talking cloud vs. on-prem or colo, or are we talking AWS vs. other-cloud?

For the first (cloud vs. non-cloud) it's clear that cloud has some advantages because you don't have to manage hardware.

For the second (AWS vs. other-cloud), at least in my experience, AWS is simply the best experience available. If anything the other cloud providers go out of their way to offer special deals and cozy customer relationships to try to get customers to switch, but AWS is still the gold standard in availability and uptime and ease of use.

The gap is narrowing as the field becomes more commoditized though. And I think that's what we're really seeing here. As things like k8s get more common, solutions are becoming more and more substrate-independent, so companies hunt for smaller, more local, cheaper, ambitious alternatives. Everyone is scared of vendor lock-in so it's getting harder for cloud providers to offer distinguishing features.

They get you hooked on a teaser tariff. Like $100k worth of AWS, Azure, GCP credits. Like a good drug dealer, the first hit is free. Once you've convinced yourself that moving to AWS is the right move, based on the teaser rate, they've got you in their jaws. Most of your IT team is gone, most of your on-prem/colo hardware is outdated, and for tax reasons it's better to lease than to purchase capital intensive equipment. But now the low AWS rate is gone, you can't go back, and you'd look like a fool for calling your decision a mistake.

I really like AWS. But I feel like there is a lot of money to be made in consultants overselling services built on it. And a lot of traditionally expensive IT teams are being replaced with even more expensive cloud "architects".

For very small companies (startups) AWS makes a lot of sense because you have very few employees and you don’t want that limited employee time being spent managing servers

I can try to answer for US.

We're small (< 25 people). We maintained a single rack in a colo, and all the servers were showing their age. We weighed lease cost for replacement (along with hassle of actually doing it), and migrated into AWS last January.

It's been ... messy. I'm not certain we'll stay. It's easier in the sense that we can bring up arbitrarily many new machines without needing to call Dell when a host gets full, but it's definitely not cheaper. And weirdball AWS-only things get in the way. Oh, and literally nothing is simple or easy in administration or setup.

If I had it to do over again, I think I'd have bitten the bullet and leased more boxes instead.

Allows you to move stuff from capex to opex while remaining in compliance and governance lines.

They’re not idiots. A lot of thought went into it, and the idea it’s all just incompetent BS dreamt up on a golf course is madness.

Not enough humans to deal with physical machines and the compliance issues around them.

I agree if we are operating a cat meme distribution business that AWS starts to look a bit overkill. Something like a banking consultancy is a different matter. Good luck passing due diligence as a bank's vendor when you are also physically responsible for the machines. You can do this, but it sucks and it's your entire job + overtime + on call.

AWS has a dedicated feature (artifact) that can serve as the foundation of your compliance package. If you are racking your own machines you get to start with a blank pile of forms.

Because AWS technical expertise are second to none. And for most companies their AWS spend is small % of overheads. Sure they could spend less but their marketing department is lighting money on fire so that would be premature optimization.

They provide a service that simply nobody (except GCP and Azure) can easily match.

It's expensive, but you get what you pay for.

It’s easier in most companies to get a cloud bill approved than to ask for a big chunk of cash for hardware and also to pay someone to set it up

Thank you. That’s already better than the original article that comes off as an unhinged rant with name calling.

If your entire business decision is driven solely by an emotional response to Hetzner having a policy that needs ID, maybe you’re not the right person to be making these sort of decisions?

Hetzner if you have sense.

I haven't found a competent supplier who doesn't want to know who you are.

I entirely exclude Digital Ocean from competent suppliers.

Low friction is cool but it leads to tons of abuse

This reads like an ad for Hetzner. Thanks, antispam experience!

When was this? I signed up recently and don't remember this requirement.

In a hostile jurisdiction, I suppose based on your argument.

The German providers have always been more aggressive on KYC & simply saying no to potential clients in some cases.

What works best for you I guess.

To be fair: all hosting providers deal with A LOT of abuse happening on their systems. Malware being hosted, people abusing trial periods ands free plans etc.

No sure if requiring a ID upfront is the perfect solution (if i recall, i never had to provide a ID on my private or business Hetzner accounts) but it isn't just there to annoy you.

Welcome to Europe, the land of sustainable business. We do not need to grow just to pollute our planet and die a painful death, individually and as a species.

If you still think your Hetzner registration process is convoluted, try getting a license for IDA Pro.

You'll love the experience, I promise.

!/s

Count on German companies to make things more complicated than they need and to squander clients for minor nitpicks

Think getting away from vendor lock-in was one of the primary reason Kubernetes took off

Public administration in Europe has already started moving away from the american hyperscalers. This is of course happening at the usual speed which is characteristic of all public administration.

More related to the EU's movement away from foreign-hosted infrastructure.

Following the article that generated this column [0] says:

> Skywise, a platform that aggregates and analyzes aviation data, and Case Management Assistant for customers' technical queries will continue to be hosted by AWS.

--

  0: https://www.theregister.com/paas-and-iaas/2026/07/16/airbus-migrating-70-critical-apps-from-aws-to-frances-scaleway-amid-digital-sovereignty-push/5272373

Skywise is basically a re-branded Palantir Foundry, and Palantir’s not exactly a big believer in avoiding US tech…

It’s the queue of users who want to be hand held because they can’t do X, or open Y, that IT doesn’t want to deal with.

Also, there’s no budget for training any more.

Do you even comprehend the timescales at which these companies operate.

Well, yes, since long before the current administration. It's mentioned multiple times (with examples) in the European Parliament's "The Echelon Affair" report.[0] But it seems to me that this is not really what you're asking, but rather you're implying that there's no justification for this move other than European protectionism. If this is the case, I would argue that a sitting administration actively threatening with the invasion of your territories is a compelling argument for politicians and business leaders to evaluate alternatives.

[0] https://historicalarchives.europarl.europa.eu/files/live/sit...

You don’t need an espionage case to decide a provider is too much risk.

The political unreliability alone is enough. Just takes one orange guy waking up in a foul mood one day and doing something erratic. That increases risk for using anything American across the board even if the individual companies have done nothing wrong

We have a proven case of USA pulling the plug. Not sure which is worse.

From the NY Times, 1995:

> Spying on allies for economic advantage is a crucial new assignment for the C.I.A. now that American foreign policy is focused on commercial interests abroad. President Clinton made economic intelligence a high priority of his Administration, specifically information to protect and defend American competitiveness, technology and financial security in a world where an economic crisis can spread across global markets in minutes

At the time "only" to have the upper hand in trade negotiations, and presumably when "having the President press foreign countries to award business to American firms", as they call it. But that was 30 years ago, and trust that these these things aren't directly forwarded to US private industry is in short supply these days

https://www.nytimes.com/1995/10/15/world/emerging-role-for-t...

https://archive.is/LmEA1 (same site without paywall)

It doesn’t have to be espionage, it can be just operational risk. There is the case of Trump ordering sanctions against the International Criminal Court, and Microsoft blocking their accounts to comply (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_14203). Or more recently, Trump deciding who gets access to Anthropic’s latest models. You can’t build a business on a vendor who may be forced to block you at any moment.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB95326824311657269 (https://archive.is/N46di)

Why We Spy on Our Allies

March 17, 2000 11:56 am ET

By R. James Woolsey, a Washington lawyer and a former director of central intelligence.

We'll begin with some candor from the American side. Yes, my continental European friends, we have spied on you. And it's true that we use computers to sort through data by using keywords. Have you stopped to ask yourselves what we're looking for?

tl;dr: "You bribe, so we spy"