“Never waste a good crisis!” said Winston Churchill. We are currently facing a crisis that has yet to be widely recognized: our cloud dependence on the US.
Churchill meant that during a crisis, we often become resourceful and seek out possibilities that would otherwise be unthinkable. For Churchill, the crisis was WWII, and he spoke these words at the founding of the United Nations.
The crisis I want to discuss today is our heavy dependence on American clouds. Trump only has to get annoyed at someone, and yet another (important) person or organization is deprived of access to all their files, emails, addresses, and appointments. We saw this this year with the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court and countless other organizations.
This has not stopped the Dutch government from simply continuing its migration to Microsoft’s cloud. Office support, DigiD, the tax authorities, all data and services are seemingly unstoppably moving in that direction.
Other organizations are beginning to see the danger but are still dreading the major IT migration associated with regaining control over their own data.
It is not simply a matter of picking up your cloud in the US and deploying it on the same provider’s EU servers. This move still gives the White House the same opportunity, despite the smooth talk from Microsoft and its ilk.
What is the problem? Chances are that under the time pressure you have imposed on them, your IT staff have started using more and more “handy” features from Azure, GCN, or AWS that you can not easily find elsewhere. Replacing that means rework, reimplementing what you already had.
If you see this naively as a chore, a migration that will consume all your IT budget for the coming years, which you can not afford!
The creative solution is to seize the opportunity and rebuild your online services instead of planning a cloud migration. Hire a good architect (I know one…). Learn from the past: what wouldn’t you do the same again? What are you satisfied with? Look to the future: how could your processes be improved to become faster, better, and more flexible? And what IT resources are needed for that?
Looking at it this way, we are not talking not wasted hours and costs, but the next step in the evolution of your online landscape. You are taking a step forward that can lead to lower costs or better service. This allows you to prioritize the positive side and win support!
This is one of the strategic choices to make in 2026. DM me if you need help with that.
