Silicon Valley’s tech giants, including Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, and Google, have recently invested billions of dollars into Europe’s cloud market. Amazon, already running data centers in Germany, is planning on opening additional centers in France and Great Britain. Google is also opening a new data center in the Netherlands, adding to its already existing centers in Finland and Belgium. Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft are also working on similar projects. In doing so, these tech giants foster benefits for both themselves, their European customers, and the economies of European nations.
One of the primary motives for these tech giants is the trust and credibility that comes with a local cloud infrastructure. Such companies are responding to concerns about keeping people’s personal information digitally secure through these investments. In the past, data would have likely been stored on servers in the United States. However, by keeping such data local, Silicon Valley’s giants will ease some of the privacy concerns that continue to loom among European countries. In turn, European countries benefit from an increased sense of security and continue to build trust in these companies.
These tech giants are also incentivized by the booming market for data storage services in Europe. The market, although much smaller than the data storage market in the United States, is a hotbed for economic growth. In fact, it is expected to double in value to around $16.1 billion by the end of the decade. As a result, there is a clear economic incentive that continues to drive these companies to invest.
Finally, these investments are crucial because of the interplay between legal regulations abroad and the demand for American technologies. Many European countries have imposed digital sovereignty regulations that require that customer data be stored domestically rather than overseas. By working to obey these public policy demands, tech giants can infiltrate the growing European market while complying with data storage regulations—avoiding any messy legal battles that would otherwise arise along the way. This provides opportunities for growth to both tech giants and the economies of Europe—in other words, a win-win situation.
Tech-Giants-Invest-In-Local-Cloud-Infrastructure-To-Build-Credibility-In-Europe (PDF)