If Delos Cloud and Bleu were to take over operations in a crisis, they would do so on a network that had no buffer capacity and where there was no possibility of moving workloads to another region for load balancing. And Kirschner sees another massive hurdle: “The ultimate technical problem is that an Azure environment that is cut off from Microsoft’s global engineering network will quickly lose performance because security patches, AI updates and optimizations are no longer included. A sovereign cloud in crisis mode will most likely become a static environment that can only be maintained.”
All of this is just about the software – but SAP‘s announcement is also problematic when it comes to hardware, Kirschner continues: “Azure runs on highly specialized, customized server and network devices. If geopolitical tensions are so high that access to the software is blocked – how are you going to procure the specific proprietary hardware required to repair or expand this infrastructure without violating the same sanctions?”
Aside from the technical concerns, the agreement signals that Microsoft is either taking the threat of a kill switch seriously or at least assumes that corporate executives are worried enough about it that they need to be reassured.
“From a strategic perspective, this agreement is a stroke of genius because it effectively transforms the sovereign cloud from a compliance obstacle into a disaster recovery plan,” Kirschner notes. Through the emergency option, in which local partners such as Delos Cloud and Bleu can access the source code in the context of geopolitical crises, the EU is trying to ensure digital sovereignty and resilience in crisis scenarios.
Whether this can work in practice is another question. Kirschner describes the situation from a geopolitical perspective: “While hardliners like France want to exclude US cloud providers at the highest government level, Microsoft is paradoxically cementing its lock-in approach. They have eliminated the greatest political risk to the use of US hyperscalers in the public sector. But what is the alternative? The EU simply does not have the technology or the infrastructure to truly become independent of the big three US providers.” (fm)
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