De Nederlandsche Bank signs with Schwarz Digits (Stackit), moving off American cloud providers over geopolitical risk and EU data sovereignty concerns.
Key Takeaways
Schwarz Digits runs Stackit, a sovereign cloud platform built under European law, exempt from US Cloud Act data handover requirements.
DNB and AFM warned last year that Dutch financial sector was over-reliant on US providers; DNB then had to admit it was itself largely dependent on American infra.
Schwarz Group is investing 11 billion euros in a Lübbenau data center; existing clients include SAP, Bayern Munich, and Deutsche Bahn.
DNB’s own director acknowledged European clouds are “not yet as robust or high-quality” as AWS, Google, or Azure – the tradeoff is sovereignty over maturity.
Schleswig-Holstein’s troubled Microsoft-to-open-source migration is the live cautionary tale: large public-sector cloud exits rarely go smoothly.
Hacker News Comment Review
Commenters are split between genuine surprise that Lidl operates hyperscaler-grade infrastructure and recognition that Stackit has been quietly growing for years with anchor tenants like Lidl and Kaufland.
The vendor lock-in angle resonated: one commenter argued that sticking to VMs and open-source internals from the start would have made any provider switch trivial – a point that lands hard for anyone mid-migration now.
Skepticism about the “personal choice vs. regulatory pressure” framing: commenters question how voluntary DNB’s move really is given the ICC Microsoft cutoff and broader EU political climate.
Notable Comments
@retired: argues VMs plus open-source internals would have kept cloud exits cheap – “just move the VMs” – a concrete architectural lesson for teams still evaluating lock-in.
