The idea of a pan-European cloud free of NSA spying pushed by Neelie Kroess and other European politicians finds an opponent in the shape of SAP, the biggest software developer in the continent.
"A merger between some European IT companies with the aim of drawing a line between them and the rest of the global market does not make any sense," SAP co-Chief Executive Jim Hagemann Snabe tells Reuters. "Such an endeavor would be doomed to fail from the outset."
Hagemann Snabe argues such a pan-European cloud-- an equivalent of Airbus for IT, if you will-- will only lead to "less competition, less innovation and less growth in a globally-focused sector." Instead he suggests the promotion of competition and young talent in order to create the next generation of European IT companies.
Recent revelations of the US government spying on the global communications are a sensitive (not to mention controversial) topic anywhere, and nowhere more so than in Germany, whose history with the Stasi secret police led to some of the strictest privacy laws in the world. The European Commission is also in favour of tougher data privacy laws, starting off with the civil liberties committee within the European Parliament.
The EU aims to create a new code of conduct by May 2014, marking the first update on European data protection laws since 1995.
German politicians, including chancellor Angela Merkel, believe Europe needs to become less dependent on US companies of the Microsoft and Google variety. SAP however remains mum on the matter-- perhaps understandably, lest it offends US customers.
