European cloud computing platforms

A cloud computing platform rents out infrastructure on demand and bills by consumption. Beyond virtual machines you get managed building blocks: databases, object storage, container clusters, load balancers, private networks and DNS, all driven through an API or console. Teams use them to launch environments in minutes and to scale capacity up and down without buying hardware or signing long contracts.

Cloud is where the CLOUD Act question bites hardest, since a US parent company can be asked for data held by its European subsidiaries. Providers such as OVHcloud, Scaleway and STACKIT are headquartered in Europe and run their own data centres here. Choosing a European cloud platform also means contracts, invoices and support in EU jurisdictions, and fewer surprises in your records of processing.