Risk to the sovereignty of Europe's cloud and why data centers in Austria are more important than ever
In the article „Europe's Internet on a tightrope“, orf.at (November 20, 2025) shows how heavily Europe's Internet and data infrastructure is now dependent on a few US tech companies and why this is a cause for concern.
Dependence on cloud services
Today, many companies and users no longer store their data on their own servers, but in huge cloud infrastructures from US providers such as Microsoft, Amazon or Google.
Although such cloud services promise lower costs and less administrative effort, the price is enormous dependency.
A failure of these services (technical or perhaps politically motivated) can paralyze entire regions. Concrete incidents (e.g. Cloudflare outage, Amazon outages) make it clear that these scenarios are no longer a distant prospect.
Risk from geopolitical tensions
Lawyer and data protection activist Max Schrems warns that cloud services could be shut down for entire countries. In view of increasing tensions between the USA and Europe, the scenario is no longer „purely theoretical“.
This is not just about technical dependency - but also about issues of data protection control and Europe's digital sovereignty. Such risks show why stable, independent solutions are so important in Europe.
Why colocation & server housing in Vienna are relevant
This is where the concept of Colocation Instead of in the clouds of large US corporations, companies could store their servers in independent, European or Austrian data centers. Data centers to accommodate. This reduces dependency on global cloud providers and strengthens regional control.
In particular Data centers in Vienna or generally in Austria offer with Server Housing an alternative for storing data locally. In compliance with European data protection standards and with better legal certainty.
One example: upstreamNet operates several state-of-the-art data centers in Vienna. These not only offer colocation space, but also high-performance data centers. IP-Connectivity, direct connection to Internet Exchanges and thus a robust basis for Central and Eastern European networks.
The path to digital sovereignty
The orf.at article vividly shows how fragile our digital infrastructure can be when it depends on a few global providers.
However, by expanding server housing and colocation in Vienna and Austria, coupled with reliable IP connectivity, there is a realistic chance of strengthening Europe's digital sovereignty while ensuring data protection and stability.
For companies that don't want to get caught up in risky cloud dependencies, the path is clear: host data where it belongs again. Close, transparent and sovereign.
Source: https://orf.at/stories/3410746/
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