Introduction

It has come as a surprise to us that the political tensions in the US, along with the new administration and tariffs, appear to be affecting organisations’ decisions on where to host services outside of the dominant global companies. In recent days, we have had several inquiries asking for help to migrate services to other providers.

At Digitalis, we have been advocates for years for moving away from expensive global cloud providers to smaller ones, and even better, for bare metal as opposed to virtual machines. Perhaps it’s time to revisit our reasons for this.

The big three

Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure dominate the market as you can see from the chart below.

There are some smaller players as well, but the US is by far the largest owner, followed by China. We do not have any cloud providers of this size in Europe, but we do have many small providers that can be suitable for the majority of companies.

Some notable European cloud providers include:

• OVHcloud (France)
• Scaleway (France)
• IONOS (Germany)
• Hetzner (Germany)
• UpCloud (Finland)
• Exoscale (Switzerland)
• Cleura (Sweden)
• T-Systems (Germany, a subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom)

For a large number of businesses, especially those operating primarily within Europe or with strong data privacy concerns, these European providers can offer suitable infrastructure and services. They might not have the exact same breadth of services as the hyperscalers, but they can be cost-effective and aligned with European values.

Services

The hyperscalers are very good at providing IaS, PaS, DBaaS, etc. They have been building this into their offering over the years with large quantities of investments.

From my own personal experience, I see that many corporations prefer to buy, let’s say, a Database as a Service (DBaaS) such as PostgreSQL instead of running it themselves for lack of expertise in the company or simplicity.

This is probably where the smaller European clouds fail the test as managed services of this quality are either not available or not good enough.

If you move out of the hyperscalers you are likely to need to bring in the skills into the organization or hire a third-party company like Digitalis to do it for you.

Cost

While hyperscalers like AWS, Azure, and GCP offer vast capabilities, their pricing models can become significantly expensive, particularly at scale. Exploring smaller, specialised cloud providers can sometimes yield substantial cost savings, especially for organisations with specific needs that don’t require the full suite of services offered by the giants.

The cost depends on many factors so it’s not easy for me to provide you with a figure.

• Specific workload requirements: Smaller providers might offer more competitive pricing for certain types of workloads, but not others.
• Service parity: Hyperscalers offer a broad range of managed services that can reduce operational overhead, which might not be available or as mature as smaller providers. Migrating and managing these services independently can introduce new costs.
• Scalability and reliability needs: Hyperscalers are renowned for their massive scalability and robust reliability. Smaller providers might have limitations in these areas, potentially impacting business continuity and requiring additional investment for redundancy.
• Contractual agreements: The pricing and discount structures of both hyperscalers and smaller providers can vary significantly based on usage commitments and contract terms.
• Migration costs: Switching providers involves significant effort and potential costs related to migration, testing, and retraining.

The case for bare metal

I have discussed in the past the merits of a bare-metal infrastructure so I’m not going to expand much in this area, just a few lines.

Building upon the discussion about hyperscaler costs, it’s worth highlighting the compelling advantages that smaller providers often offer in the realm of bare metal infrastructure. In my opinion, this is an area where they genuinely excel. You can frequently find powerful and cost-effective bare metal servers that outperform comparable cloud virtual machines in both price and performance. This is particularly attractive for those looking to deploy applications on Kubernetes, as running container orchestration directly on bare metal eliminates virtualisation overhead, leading to enhanced resource utilisation and speed.

The same can be said of any data-intensive application such as a Database that would benefit greatly from faster disks.

However, while the performance and cost benefits of bare metal from smaller providers are significant, especially for consistent and demanding workloads, it’s crucial to acknowledge the trade-offs. Organisations need to carefully consider potential limitations in scalability compared to the cloud, the increased operational responsibilities associated with managing the underlying infrastructure, and the absence of the extensive suite of managed services offered by hyperscalers.

Final words

It may be time to give some love ❤️ to the small cloud and bare metal providers, especially those located in Europe. They offer good value for money and truthfully many organisations would benefit from the savings in these uncertain times.

Many companies go straight into the hyperscalers without considering alternatives to then be saddled up with large bills wasting money that could be better employed in growing the company.

Don’t let inertia dictate your cloud strategy. Explore the power and value that European cloud and bare metal providers can offer — it might be the smartest move you make for your business.

Contact our team for a free consultation to discuss how we can tailor our approach to your specific needs and challenges.

I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords

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