A recent article announced that Amazon Web Services, AWS, a popular hosting solution for websites in the U.S. has just started gaining popularity in Europe. Why did it take so long for them to adopt this enterprise solution? This post aims to discuss some of the issues and reasons for the delay.

Conservative technology policies

CIOs all over Europe are historically conservative even as the industry as a whole has seen growth with lots of new technologies surfacing.

According to a survey by Deloitte on global CIOs of 2014, CIOs spend 55% of their budget on maintaining core IT solutions and 22% on new business growth. New solutions take a long time to implement and must be thought out in detail for big companies. Even for smaller companies, new technology is not quickly adopted.

Despite the success of AWS and rapid growth, CIOs still think carefully before adopting any new technology.

Security and Location

It seems that despite the promises of security that Amazon boasts, CIOs preferred their data to be nearby. Due to Germany's strict privacy standards, they did not adopt AWS until a data center went up in Frankfurt. As Americans are quickly adopting cloud technologies, Germany seems to have reservations. Their privacy standards are high and I am curious to find out if that helps or hurts them in the future.

Moving Forward

Amazon seems ready and willing to meet the demanding needs of European customers. This new data center creates more confidence in the conservative customers overseas. It also showcases Amazon as a potential leader as local competitors try to gain a foothold.

Do you think Germany's delay is beneficial or harmful to their overall IT strategy?

Photo By Bernard Goldbach