High prices and issues with stability, performance and security seem to have resulted in Microsoft pulling the plug
Last week, Microsoft announced they would «deliver cloud services from new data centres in Germany» to «meet evolving customer needs». What they were saying is: their collaboration with Deutsche Telekom, which was providing customers Microsoft cloud services (including Office365) under strict German jurisdiction, is shutting down. Customers can no longer sign up and the system is only maintained with security updates – for improvements and new features, look somewhere else.
What does this mean?
We argued last year that a European data center is no solution to requirements to keep data under control. While, often, companies can show the servers are in Europe, frequently data still lives globally, and even if not, the US government has shown it can compel companies to hand data over even if that data is solidly hosted in Europe.
companies hosting data at Telekom now either have to accept foreign government access to their data, accept a slow decline of the service until inevitable shut-down, or move to a private cloud solution like Nextcloud.
Microsofts’ deal with Telekom was, in some ways, a clever hack around this problem. Data was handled by a trustee under German rules and Microsoft employees simply had no access. While perhaps a foreign government could compel Microsoft to make changes to the software that would give it a back door, the data was otherwise under German control.
With this option from the table, companies hosting data at Telekom now either have to accept foreign government access to their data, accept a slow decline of the service until inevitable shut-down, or move their data and collaboration from Office365 to a private cloud solution like Nextcloud.
Why did this happen?
over-priced, under-performing and unpopular with customers
Handelsblatt.com called the Telekom cloud solution «over-priced, under-performing and unpopular with customers», and their sources tell them «Microsoft Cloud Deutschland» has lost Microsoft over 100 million euro. They detail why the project failed, essentially stating that the security was the main problem:
extra security turned out to be a real hindrance to doing business. Companies who wanted to establish secure information links to Asian subsidiaries or overseas databases were hit with delays and crashes. Servers went down regularly, system updates were often impossible. And all this for a service which cost 25 percent more than ordinary cloud computing.
Perhaps this should come as no surprise – a product designed to be an open, public cloud, designed as competition to consumer products like Google Docs, Dropbox and others, might not work that well when strict security and data locality rules are forced on it.
So technical issues, lack of customer satisfaction and financial motives explain why Microsoft and Deutsche Telekom gave up. At the same time, it is possible Microsoft also faces less pressure to provide privacy-protecting services – or faces pressure to not do so. After all, since the Cloud act has been signed by US President Donald Trump, Microsoft has stopped fighting data requests from the US government, even if that data resides in Europe.
In either case, enterprises looking for a place to store data without losing control are back to only one real viable option: Nextcloud, incidentally also the choice of the German Federal Government. A solution architected and designed for control from the ground up.
Nextcloud Hub 9 te permite estar conectado. Descubre nuevas funciones de federación, automatización del flujo de trabajo, una gran revisión del diseño y mucho más en tu plataforma de colaboración de código abierto favorita.
Organisations, small and large, need a way to ensure the resiliency and digital sovereignty of their operations – an open-source, privacy-respecting alternative to Teams. And today, we present that solution - Nextcloud Talk.
In this article, we find out how open-source AI gets you your privacy back and explore examples of reliable AI models that you can use in your ecosystem.
On December 3rd, we invite you to the Nextcloud Enterprise Day Paris, Nextcloud's flagship event for professionals. The day will kick off with a keynote by our CEO and founder, Frank Karlitschek—a highlight where he will share our vision for the future of online collaboration, followed by a major announcement about Nextcloud Talk!
Guardamos algunas cookies para contar los visitantes y facilitar el uso del sitio. Esto no sale de nuestro servidor y no es para rastrearte personalmente. Consulta nuestra política de privacidad para obtener más información. Personalización
Las cookies estadísticas recopilan información de forma anónima y nos ayudan a comprender cómo utilizan nuestro sitio web nuestros visitantes. Utilizamos Matomo alojado en la nube.
Matomo
_pk_ses*: Cuenta la primera visita del usuario
_pk_id*: Ayuda a no contar dos veces las visitas.
mtm_cookie_consent: Recuerda que el usuario ha dado su consentimiento para almacenar y utilizar cookies.
_pk_ses*: 30 minutos
_pk_id*: 28 días
mtm_cookie_consent: 30 días