For years, IT professionals have routinely turned to the three major hyperscalers: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP). Although these platforms are exceptionally powerful, relying exclusively on these global providers presents significant challenges for businesses. These include complex compliance issues related to European privacy laws, unpredictable data transfer costs (egress fees), and the risk of significant vendor lock-in.
As regulations such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the recently enacted EU Data Act have an increasing impact, architects and IT managers are actively seeking sovereign European alternatives. This is where the European “Big 3” come into play: OVHcloud, IONOS, and Scaleway.
These providers are not simply regional or scaled-down versions of the major hyperscalers. They are mature, enterprise-grade cloud providers with their own hardware innovations, a strong focus on open-source technologies, multiple data center locations across Europe, and maximum legal certainty regarding data sovereignty.
In this blog, we examine their technical services and compare them to those of global hyperscalers. We also offer practical insights for engineering teams, architects, and IT decision-makers who are navigating the increasingly complex landscape of modern cloud infrastructures and digital sovereignty.
The Big Three
OVHcloud: the pioneer in vertical integration
OVHcloud is Europe’s largest cloud provider and is known for its extensive vertical integration. The company develops its own servers and uses a patented liquid cooling system to significantly reduce energy consumption. Instead of relying on closed, proprietary technologies, OVHcloud builds its extensive service portfolio around four core areas: Bare Metal Cloud, Hosted Private Cloud, Public Cloud, and Web Hosting & Domain Names.
For platform engineers, OVHcloud truly excels in the area of infrastructure. The platform is based on OpenStack and allows users to deploy bare-metal instances directly via APIs or Terraform. In addition, OVHcloud offers a mature, CNCF-compliant Managed Kubernetes Service that integrates seamlessly with Managed Private Registries, Managed Databases, and S3-compatible Object Storage.
A key distinguishing feature is the so-called “Bare Metal Pod” environment, which has achieved the stringent SecNumCloud 3.2 certification. As a result, this environment provides an extremely reliable and secure foundation for hosting sensitive business and government workloads. OVHcloud operates data centers in Europe, North and South America, and the Asia-Pacific region, and is expanding its presence into the Middle East, allowing organizations to choose from a wide range of geographic locations.
IONOS: The Software-Driven Partner for Businesses
IONOS Cloud was specifically developed to meet the stringent requirements that business organizations have in terms of compliance, security, and reliability. With geographically redundant data centers in Europe and the United States, IONOS offers a comprehensive cloud portfolio, including Compute Engine (IaaS), Object Storage, Managed Kubernetes, Apache Kafka, and Managed Databases.
One of the most distinctive features is the Data Center Designer (DCD). Instead of limiting developers to predefined virtual machine configurations, this visual drag-and-drop environment allows them to design a fully customized Software-Defined Data Center. The environment can also be fully automated via APIs and the IONOS Terraform Provider.
Users can allocate vCPUs, memory, and storage capacity with high precision and take advantage of "live vertical scaling," which allows resources to be added to running applications without requiring a system restart. In addition, IONOS offers an integrated connection with Acronis Cloud Backup for efficient disaster recovery scenarios and features an AI Model Hub for the secure deployment of open-source AI models within a controlled environment.
Scaleway: the innovation-driven challenger
Scaleway offers a comprehensive cloud ecosystem designed for modern development teams and distributed application architectures. The company is known for its strong commitment to sustainability: its data centers run entirely on renewable energy and achieve a highly efficient Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE).
The range of services is extensive and includes Elastic Metal, serverless containers, Managed Kubernetes, Block Storage, and integrated support for NATS as a messaging solution for distributed systems.
Scaleway stands out internationally thanks to its wide variety of hardware platforms. For example, it offers Apple Silicon Mac mini instances for CI/CD workloads and was the first cloud provider to make servers based on the open RISC-V architecture available. For AI applications, Scaleway offers an extensive range of NVIDIA GPUs, ranging from cost-effective L4 cards to powerful bare-metal NVIDIA H100 SXM clusters connected via NVLink.
This enables organizations to train and deploy large-scale AI models and Large Language Models (LLMs) within European jurisdictions without relying on non-European cloud providers. Scaleway has availability zones in Paris, Amsterdam, Warsaw, and Milan, ensuring strong geographical coverage across Europe.
The considerations: where global hyperscalers still dominate
While switching from global hyperscalers to European cloud providers may be appealing, this decision also involves some important architectural considerations.
First, the European Big 3 do not offer the same breadth and depth of specialized Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) services as AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud. When business-critical applications rely heavily on proprietary services such as AWS Kinesis for data streaming or Azure IoT Hub for IoT management, migrating to open-source alternatives within a European cloud environment can require significant development and migration efforts.
In addition, while OVHcloud, IONOS, and Scaleway do have a robust infrastructure in Europe and North America, they cannot offer the same global coverage as the hyperscalers. Especially in emerging markets and remote regions in Asia, South America, and other parts of the world, the major U.S. providers have a much denser network of regions, availability zones, and edge locations. For organizations that require very low latency worldwide, this can be an important consideration.
Finally, there is a significant difference in investment capacity. U.S. hyperscalers invest hundreds of billions of euros annually in research, development, and infrastructure. This scale enables them to make new technologies and the latest generation of hardware available faster and on a larger scale worldwide. As a result, European cloud providers are generally slower to roll out the very latest innovations and have less capacity to implement them immediately on a global scale.
