European alternatives in enterprise IT exist and are often cost-competitive. What makes them different from American hyperscalers is not quality, but the operating model: hyperscalers sell integration as a service; European providers sell infrastructure and assume the customer brings integration competence. This redistribution of responsibility plays to Europe's structural advantage in technical talent density.
- 1. Cloud and managed services
European clouds and the managed-service gap.
- 2. Productivity software
Office substitution, where it works and where it doesn't.
- 3. Identity and access management
Identity federation, SSO, and access management.
- 4. AI alternatives
Mistral and the open-weights option.
- 5. Processor architecture
ARM, RISC-V, and Europe's processor choices.