Maybe one really needs 'the cloud' (whatever that is) or the accompanying services, I don't know, but I do know that good old webhosting is still around. At least here in The Netherlands. Good for email, good for websites and webapps, good for data storage.
There are enough options to choose from the decentralized menu of hosting offerings. Most are cheap enough also, but watch out for the slightly bigger webhosting companies that are taken over one-by-one by some group of investors wanting to play AWS (and upping the prices by 400% or so).
The cloud, speaking for small-to-medium companies, is two things; a directory server with file storage, email, and an attached suite of productivity tools (e.g. Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace), and virtual, distributed infrastructure (e.g. AWS, Google Cloud, or Azure).
You can build the offerings commonly sold as "cloud" yourself, but it requires a ludicrously unreasonable amount of engineering work to reinvent the wheel and end up with a shitty solution that gets your users frustrated, guaranteed.
We need a European contender (or multiple!) that can actually compete in one or both of these disciplines. There is going to be a huge market for this very soon.
I think a ton of services would actually run just fine on a single old fashioned Linux machine without any fancy cloud stuff, we've just been conditioned to think that it's somehow wrong.
I did not necessarily need an explanation of what 'the cloud' is or isn't. I came to believe it's definition is vague on purpose. I found out it's (almost) the same old internet with new shiny marketing labels on it (I say 'almost' because clubs like Netflix probably need their movies stored near the end user for seamless HD streaming). With the end goal of getting everyone's data on someone else's server (so they can control it, eventually without your permission). It works because programmers who might understand technically what it is, usually don't call the shots when some Big Tech salesperson offers shiny new apps from the US.
Luckily, I don't need a cloud. Not someone else's cloud, not even building my own cloud. Why? Because the technical progress required for me to save, work, share and publish stuff online (or locally on my computer) was already there from the '90s. And luckily, it's not standing still. Although every exec and marketing boy wants you to believe the only good stuff is the next hyped up stuff.
We see the same thing happening with LLMs and AI. It's marketing fluff all around, by people who so fully believe in it that it becomes scary. And it's hard to argue against it, because it is impressive what LLMs can do. It's also bullshite and has nothing to do with reasoning, or thinking, or whatever human capabilities are projected onto a digital parrot (I don't want to ruffle some feathers, pun intended, a lot of people probably have good use for LLMs and it's still interesting that people work on these systems).
A computer, an internet connection and some webhosting get's you more than far enough for most use cases. Without vendor lock-in.
> I did not necessarily need an explanation of what 'the cloud' is or isn't.
You obtuse "whatever that is" sure made it sound like you did.
> Luckily, I don't need a cloud. […] A computer, an internet connection and some webhosting get's you more than far enough for most use cases. Without vendor lock-in.
That is the kind of stuff you can only say if you're not concerned about anyone but yourself.
I have employees that need to send emails, do calls with customers, work on digital documents, and collaborate efficiently. If they drop their laptop, or it gets stolen, I don't want these documents to get lost, or compromised. I need them to sign in to a myriad of services securely, using a single identity that I can centrally block if their account is compromised or the contract terminated.
All of that isn't what some "marketing boy" wants me to believe, but hard requirements to do business, and protect the privacy of our employees and our customers.
I'll just state for the record that these particular use cases make up something like 90% of what my employer uses Office 365 for, and it's absolutely impossible to do our business without it right now. If we had to solve document storage by plain old file-server storage, we wouldn't even be compliant with local laws.
I find it really annoying when tradional hosters (indeed in NL and DE for instance) move to the grifting 'pay per use'; the same VPS that I could beat over the head for millions req/month for 5 euros, now costs, for the same usage, 50+ euros because suddenly i'm paying for the cpu, memory, disk, network etc that I use. It costs them $0 extra, so that's all profit. I had it a few time now ; you can recognise it either indeed if they get taken over by some large investment firm and/or when they start offering more and more 'cloud services' next to their VPSs; once they have the infrastructure up and running, they start screwing over people. Mind you, if the service was better, then maybe, but it's not; it's just vastly more expensive.
There are enough options to choose from the decentralized menu of hosting offerings. Most are cheap enough also, but watch out for the slightly bigger webhosting companies that are taken over one-by-one by some group of investors wanting to play AWS (and upping the prices by 400% or so).