2025-05-09 14:00:00
Over the past few years I’ve written a lot about the cloud, and what it means for Europe. Here I want to pull the various articles together into a coherent story. Note, nothing of what follows is in any way novel or original. While the facts presented in the articles are pretty inconvenient and in parts depressing, they are not controversial (or should not be). The cloud is a lot To start with, “the cloud” by now is a large catalog of services.
2025-05-07 15:25:00
In the earlier post ‘But how to get to that European cloud?’ I alluded to a coherent strategy that might get us to such a non-US cloud. In the present article I hope to clarify what this could mean, and why I think it could work. Here I focus especially on what should happen concretely, and who should do it. Note that this page is compatible/congruent with the latest EuroStack document.
2025-05-03 01:21:27
I do a lot of talks and because of this I also attend quite a lot of them. I’ve previously shared some hopefully useful advice on how to give a decent presentation. But there’s something I’d like to add. I’m still somewhat on hiatus, but things appear to be going better! To give the most effective presentation, you must always think about the audience. You are not there for your personal enjoyment.
2025-04-27 15:05:22
The very brief version: “going to the cloud” can mean renting services/servers that you could get from anywhere. There’s little lock-in. The same four words “going to the cloud” might also mean locking your operations to a specific cloud provider, whose proprietary services will now be part of your business processes “forever”. Be specific which variant of cloud you are signing off on! I’m mostly out of the office but this post was already in the pipeline and I thought it might be useful to get it out.
2025-04-21 00:39:17
It is written that into each life some rain must fall, and currently a lot is falling on my family. We’re getting very good care and lots of support, so please don’t worry about us. I’m told we’ll get out of this. Consider this my ‘out of office reply’ on many of my projects and activities. I’m out of it for a bit. I know lots of people have seen me drop out of meetings and presentations, now you know why.
2025-03-25 04:00:00
Ik moet ook nog even wennen aan het idee, maar “motie Cloud Kootwijk” is aangenomen (al heet ‘ie anders): "Motie van het lid Kathmann over een aanbesteding voor een rijkscloud in volledig Nederlands beheer" Deze motie kreeg van de regering de appreciatie Oordeel kamer (“👍”), en vervolgens stemden alle partijen behalve PVV er ook nog voor. Overigens legde het kabinet uit dat ze in plaats van ‘aanbesteden’ het oppakken als ‘het initiatief nemen tot’, wat ook prima is.
