Provider warns:

Europe can be blackmailed by the USA when it comes to cloud infrastructure

Even if it is not visible, the cloud is just as much a part of the critical infrastructure as the power grid or hospitals, says Windbichler.(Bild: Din Nasahrudin - stock.adobe.com)

The head of Austrian cloud provider Anexia, Alexander Windbichler, is urging Europe to take more sovereignty in the IT sector. The economy and society in the EU are dependent on the clouds of the three US companies Microsoft, Amazon and Google. Under Donald Trump's presidency, this dependency has become a matter of blackmail.

"Trump could go and say: do what we want or we'll cut off your cloud," said Windbichler. The Anexia boss went on to say that the extent to which the USA is exploiting dependency under Trump can currently be seen in the example of Ukraine.

He recently joined the board of CISPE, the European lobby group for cloud providers in Brussels. For Windbichler, the greatest lever for more independence in the digital sector is competition law. "Market-dominating software must also be able to be operated by European cloud providers at fair prices without being dependent on the software providers", and the market will then regulate the rest, says Windbichler. US companies would therefore have to be obliged to run their software on external servers.

Critical infrastructure
The situation is currently different: even if the data centers are located in Europe, cloud services can be deactivated from the USA. "And then there would be no more trains running in Europe, no more mail being delivered and no more money transactions." The impact would be similar to that of a blackout, a large-scale power outage lasting several hours or days. Even if it is not visible, the cloud is just as much a part of the critical infrastructure as the power grid or hospitals.

With around 400 employees, 210,000 customers and an annual turnover in the high double-digit million range, Anexia is one of the larger Austrian cloud service providers. To cushion the cost of electricity, the company purchased two small hydropower plants in Styria and is currently building a photovoltaic park in Lower Austria. With a combined generation capacity of 2.2 megawatts, this covers a large part of the electricity requirements of the data center in Vienna. The company is headquartered in Klagenfurt.