Analysis
Cloud & Hosting
Cloud infrastructure underpins almost all digital services in Europe. While much data is stored in European data centres, a large share of the cloud market runs on non-European platforms. U.S. hyperscalers provide not only infrastructure, but also critical platform services that organisations build on.
This analysis makes the dependency visible, maps the European providers, and shows which capabilities are still missing today to operate independently in practice.
- EU Capability Score
- 25%
- Indicative
- Market value
- €85B
- European cloud market
- Non-EU dominance
- ~70%
- vs ~5% EU share
01 — Market position
Who dominates today?
Dominance in practice: what does Europe run on?
Amazon Web ServicesThe European cloud market is largely carried by three non-European providers: AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud. They offer full cloud platforms that combine infrastructure, platform services, and developer tooling. Their strength lies in how the entire stack fits together.
Beyond compute and storage, they provide services such as identity, managed databases, monitoring, security, and CI/CD, and increasingly AI and data platforms. This allows organisations to build and operate most of their digital environment within a single ecosystem. As a result, these platforms have become the default foundation for many European digital systems.
Dominant providers
Amazon Web Services
Hyperscale cloud platformAWS is the most expansive cloud platform and often used as a technical standard. It excels at scale and flexibility and powers both simple and highly complex systems.
What AWS is used for
- Running large websites and applications
- Scalable compute and storage for growing organisations
- Modern cloud architectures without owning servers
- Engineering teams seeking maximum control and flexibility
Core strength
Extremely broad service set and deep technical capabilities, suitable for nearly any workload.
Typical role in Europe
Infrastructure
Microsoft Azure
Enterprise-focused cloud platformAzure tightly integrates with existing IT environments and is widely adopted by organisations already invested in Microsoft. It aligns closely with business processes and internal systems.
What Azure is used for
- Corporate systems within large organisations
- User management and access control
- Integration with office software and internal networks
- Migrating legacy IT to the cloud
Core strength
Smooth alignment with enterprise IT and a strong focus on management, security, and identity.
Typical role in Europe
Enterprise IT
Google Cloud
Data & AI-driven cloud platformGoogle Cloud focuses on data analysis and artificial intelligence. It powers data-driven applications and innovative AI projects.
What Google Cloud is used for
- Analysing large datasets
- Machine learning and AI workloads
- Data platforms for insights and forecasting
- Global applications demanding high performance
Core strength
Strong data and AI capabilities rooted in Google's own infrastructure and expertise.
Typical role in Europe
Data & AI
Together, these platforms provide almost everything needed to build, operate, and scale digital services globally within a single integrated ecosystem.
02 — European players
What exists in Europe?
Europe is not empty: strong infrastructure, hosting, and compliance.
Europe has several home-grown cloud and hosting providers with strong infrastructure, regional coverage, and deep alignment with European laws and regulations. They deliver reliable hosting and cloud infrastructure, often with a focus on data location, predictable costs, and compliance.
Where hyperscalers excel at a broadly integrated platform, European providers more often focus on infrastructure and a baseline layer of cloud services. Compute and storage are generally well covered, but the integrated layer of platform and developer services is usually more limited. As a result, they are strong for specific workloads, but less suited as a complete end-to-end cloud platform.
European providers
OVHcloud
EU data residency & complianceOVHcloud is the largest European cloud provider and operates fully within European jurisdictions. It is popular with organisations that demand strict data location and regulatory compliance.
What OVHcloud is used for
- Hosting applications and data within Europe
- Cloud infrastructure for government and regulated sectors
- Kubernetes and VM workloads
- Organisations focusing on data sovereignty
Core strength
Strong European presence and compliance, with a broad but infrastructure-focused offering.
Focus
Compliance-oriented
Hetzner
Price-performance & bare metalHetzner is known for powerful servers at low cost. It targets technical users who want maximum control over their infrastructure.
What Hetzner is used for
- Cost-conscious hosting of websites and apps
- Bare-metal servers and virtual machines
- Self-managed infrastructure
- Technical teams and developers
Core strength
Very sharp price-to-performance and direct access to hardware.
Focus
Cost-focused
IONOS
Enterprise hosting & managed infrastructureIONOS serves primarily business customers seeking stability, support, and managed services. The platform fits traditional IT setups and managed hosting.
What IONOS is used for
- Business applications and corporate websites
- Managed cloud and hosting solutions
- Clients that value turnkey support
- SMBs and enterprise environments
Core strength
Strong emphasis on management, support, and enterprise reliability.
Focus
Enterprise-oriented
Scaleway
Developer-friendly & GPU/AI optionsScaleway positions itself as a modern European cloud for developers. It offers a growing set of platform services and experiments with GPU and AI capacity.
What Scaleway is used for
- Cloud projects by development teams
- Modern apps and containers
- GPU workloads and AI experiments
- Startups and technical teams
Core strength
Relatively innovative services within a European framework, with a developer focus.
Focus
Developer-oriented
European providers offer strong infrastructure, reliable hosting, and clear advantages around data location and compliance. At the same time, they operate at a smaller scale and with a thinner service layer than hyperscalers. As a result, they are often an excellent fit for specific workloads, but less straightforward as a full end-to-end cloud platform for large, highly integrated environments.
03 — Missing capabilities
What is missing in practice?
From abstract to actionable — for founders, policymakers and investors.
Even though Europe has strong infrastructure and hosting, it lacks a set of crucial cloud capabilities that are required to build and run modern digital systems autonomously. These missing pieces are not in the hardware layer of servers and data centres, but in the higher-level platform layer that enables speed, scale and simplicity.
These are not abstract shortcomings. They decide where applications get built, how fast they can grow and who defines the technical standards.
Cloud services
Cloud services without server management
Cloud servicesEurope lacks a mature cloud service that lets applications run and scale automatically without teams managing servers themselves. These services automatically adjust capacity based on users or requests.
Inside most European clouds organisations have to build or operate this functionality on their own, while foreign platforms provide it out of the box.
Why this matters
Automatically scalable cloud services make it easier and faster to launch new digital products. They lower the technical barrier, reduce ops work and keep costs predictable.
Consequence
Engineering teams choose foreign cloud platforms more often or build complex custom solutions that are standard elsewhere.
Direction for a solution
Build a European cloud service layer with automatic scaling, built-in monitoring and pay-as-you-go pricing so teams can deploy without deep infrastructure expertise.
Managed database services
Cloud servicesEuropean cloud vendors offer databases, but they lack large-scale managed services that grow automatically with usage. In these services maintenance, back-ups and availability are handled by the platform rather than by the customer.
In most European environments teams still run these tasks manually, while foreign platforms offer them as a standard service.
Why this matters
Databases are the heart of digital services. Managed offerings remove operational work and keep applications stable, even as they grow.
Consequence
Organisations either administer mission-critical databases themselves or store their data with non-European cloud platforms.
Direction for a solution
Develop European database services with automatic scaling, built-in back-ups and high availability so teams can grow without specialised database expertise.
Operations
Identity and access management
OperationsEuropean clouds do not offer a central solution to manage users and their access to systems and data in a granular way. Identity is often limited to basic accounts or to disconnected solutions per product or platform.
In modern cloud environments identity and access control form the basis for security, control and accountability. Without a central approach, consistent management is complex and error-prone.
Why this matters
Identity decides who can access systems, data and digital services. For organisations and governments it is essential to guarantee security, compliance and oversight.
Consequence
European cloud environments are harder to manage centrally and less suited for complex organisations, collaborations and public-sector use cases.
Direction for a solution
Build a European platform for central identity and access management with shared policies, cross-system integrations and support for collaboration between organisations.
High cloud availability
OperationsEuropean providers largely operate from stand-alone regions and lack a broad, interconnected network where workloads fail over automatically. In practice an outage in one region often directly impacts availability.
Modern digital services — especially critical ones — must continue running during incidents or technical failures.
Why this matters
Continuous availability is essential for governments, companies and public services. Automatic distribution across regions keeps systems resilient and reduces the risk of long outages.
Consequence
For organisations with international users or mission-critical systems it is hard or impossible to rely exclusively on European platforms.
Direction for a solution
Build a pan-European network of linked cloud regions with automatic failover, clearly defined availability zones and shared operational layers.
Development
Integrated developer tools
DevelopmentEuropean cloud platforms lack an integrated workspace where development teams can build, deploy and operate their software end-to-end. Tasks such as testing, automated releases, error tracking and configuration management are spread across separate tools.
That forces teams to combine external services themselves, adding configuration work, maintenance and risk. On large cloud platforms these tools are built in and tightly linked to the infrastructure.
Why this matters
Developer workflows determine how fast new digital services emerge. When building, testing and deployment are not aligned, innovation slows down and error risk increases.
Consequence
European clouds are mainly used to host applications rather than as the primary environment to build new software. Teams therefore opt for foreign platforms even when the infrastructure itself is European.
Direction for a solution
Create a European developer platform where code can be tested and deployed automatically, errors surface instantly and configuration is managed centrally without relying on scattered external tools.
Why these five?
Together these five capabilities make up the top layer of the cloud stack. They don’t determine how powerful the infrastructure is, but how easy, scalable and attractive it is to use in practice.
They lower technical complexity for users, decide where developers build their applications and make it possible to run complete digital services inside a single platform. At the same time they create strong ecosystems and long-term dependency because applications become deeply intertwined with these services.
This layer is hard to bolt on afterwards because it requires deep integration and massive scale. European providers offer solid infrastructure, but they miss this cohesive platform layer.
04 — Score
Capability score
Directional — transparency over precision.
Structural autonomy
The score gauges whether Europe can operate this domain without structural dependency on non-European platforms.
What does this score mean?
- 0%Absent or incidental
- 25%Fragmented presence
- 50%Available but limited
- 75%Widely available
- 100%Fully competitive
Score composition
Automatically scalable cloud services without server management.
Fully managed database services with automatic scaling.
Central solution for managing users and access.
Pan-European network with automatic failover.
Integrated environment for build, test, and deployment.
These scores reflect an initial analysis of European availability and will be refined as we add more research.
05 — Conclusion
Summary
5 points — scannable and reusable.
Core issue
Europe runs many digital services on non-European cloud platforms; the dependency sits in the higher platform layers, not just datacenters.
Power landscape
AWS, Azure and Google Cloud dominate with an end-to-end stack (infra, platform services, and tooling) that many organisations treat as the norm.
What Europe has
Strong European providers offer reliable infra/hosting with a focus on data residency, cost control, and compliance but with fewer integrated platform services.
What is missing
Crucial platform capabilities are missing at scale: serverless compute, managed databases, identity & access, multi-region redundancy, and mature developer tooling.
What this means
With ~25% structural autonomy, Europe still relies on foreign ecosystems for critical parts — shaping priorities in policy, investment, and entrepreneurship.
European alternatives
Discover tools that enable digital sovereignty.
OVHCloud
Hosting
European cloud provider offering scalable public and private cloud infrastructure, VPS, dedicated servers, and hosting services.
Hetzner
Hosting
German web hosting and data center provider offering dedicated servers, VPS, cloud hosting, and managed services.
Hostinger
Hosting
Web hosting provider offering shared hosting, VPS, and domain services with a strong global user base; founded in Lithuania.