Europe Prepares for a Nightmare Scenario: The U.S. Blocking Access to Tech

The biggest issue is large enterprises, they've really painted themselves in a corner with Microsoft 365 cloud in the last 10 years or so. I see it at my own work.

Luckily Copilot is very underwhelming or this would have caused an even deeper hold. But with processes completely built up around Microsoft tooling this dependency will take years to sever.

The problem is also that there's not really any alternative yet, be it Chinese or otherwise. Nobody has bothered making anything like it. Of course they would have known Microsoft is ready to undercut them the minute they came to market as they always do.

During the last year we loosely evaluated Google docs but it's kinda less capable and also it doesn't solve any of the current problems because it's American too.

I do think European and Chinese solutions will come on the market now because they now have a big moat: not being American. But developing them will take time which we don't have.

Personally I'd love to see less 'cloud' anyway. I've never believed in it.

Ps fwiw I don't see the urgency yet at my work. They don't seem to be looking at this yet. But we are a multinational with huge footprint in both America and Europe. I could imagine them split the organisation in two different parts that are only loosely connected, similar to what we did with Russia after the invasion of Ukraine. I don't see them leaving the US completely but perhaps they will make it a separate company within the same holding.