CSPs, Data centers

UK Brexit: 10 Alternative European Data Center, Cloud Providers

Amid Brexit (Britain's decision to exit the European Union), many European customers and partners are seeking data centers and cloud services providers (CSPs) located outside of the United Kingdom (UK). While nobody is predicting a mass exodus of cloud workloads from the UK to other countries, CIOs and channel partners want to know that they have EU alternatives in case new regulatory, privacy and talent issues pop up in the UK.

With those thoughts in mind, ChannelE2E has prepared the following top 10 list of European CSPs offering IaaS. Some are located in London. But many have data centers across Europe. The list is based on data from Cloud Spectator, which tested 25 of the largest, best-known public CSPs that have data centers in Europe. The tests occurred long before Brexit became global news. But the results offer a potential guide to customers and partners seeking alternatives outside of the UK.

Here's the list...

The Top 10 European CSPs offering IaaS

10. Aruba Cloud: The company offers up this of “good reasons to choose Aruba” list. As of March 2016, Aruba Cloud had three privately owned data centers in Italy and the Czech Republic, and a network of partner data centers in  France, the UK and Germany.

9. ProfitBricks: Aside from the “why ProfitBricks” information, here’s info on the the company’s EMEA data centers and acompany timeline.

8. CloudWatt: A strong proponent of OpenStack (the open source platform), and the company’s data center is located in France.

7. vCloud Air: After you learn a bit about vCloud Air, here’s a list of vCloud Air data center locations … including deployments in the UK and Germany.

6. CenturyLink: The U.S. service provider had five CenturyLink data centers in Europe as of early 2016. However, the company as of late 2015 and early 2016 was trying to sell all of its data center infrastructure while continuing to offer the services within.

5. Google Compute: You can find the search giant’s data center zones listed here.

4. CloudSigma: The company offers Swiss, European and APAC data centers. The heavy focus is (A) for developers (B) running PaaS and SaaS atop the IaaS infrastructure and (C) big data applications. Founded in 2009 in Switzerland, the company had about 50 employees as of early 2016.

3. City Cloud: Another major OpenStack advocate, you can find “why CityCloud information here” and partner program info here.

2. UpCloud: Introduced to the Finnish market in May 2012, international operations arrived in 2013.

1. 1&1: The company’s cloud services are outlined here. Apparently, 1&1 is well known for game server hosting and Minecraft server hosting, in particular. And gamers, as you know, rank among the most demanding online users…

If you run workloads in those clouds we'd welcome your views and perspectives. Just email me: [email protected].

Related Coverage:

Joe Panettieri

Joe Panettieri is co-founder & editorial director of MSSP Alert and ChannelE2E, the two leading news & analysis sites for managed service providers in the cybersecurity market.