The EU Cloud Exit - Backup Strategies for Digital Sovereignty

You found the backup wrap up your go-to podcast for all things

backup recovery and cyber recovery.

In this episode, we take a look at something that's happening

right now across Europe, the eu, US Cloud exit movement.

European companies and governments are considering ditching US cloud

providers like Microsoft 365.

Have you thought about this?

Uh, here's my question.

I I, is somebody thinking about the backup implications of that?

If you're thinking about exiting, uh, a cloud provider?

We'll talk about your options.

Talk about what works, what doesn't, why the 3, 2, 1 rule

is more important than ever.

I. W if you're thinking about navigating a cloud exit or a migration.

By the way, if you don't know who I am, I'm w Curtis Preston, AKA, Mr.

Backup, and I've been passionate about backup and recovery for over 30 years.

Ever since.

I had to tell my boss that there were no backups of the production

database that we had just lost.

I don't want that to happen to you, and that's why I do this.

On this podcast, we turn unappreciated backup admins into Cyber Recovery Heroes.

This is the backup wrap up.

welcome to the show.

Hi, I am w Curtis Preston, AKA, Mr. Backup, and I have with me my Bluetooth

speaker, analyst Prasanna Malaiyandi.

How's it going?

Prasanna?

Good.

Curtis, did you finally decide what you're going to do?

Did it work actually?

It did, I got the sec. I went, you know, the second one.

Um, I wanted to get a Bluetooth speaker closer to my bed.

Because I, I, I'm trying to like, keep the noise down in the room when I'm watching

tv and so I wanted a Bluetooth speaker and it, it was a little harder than I thought.

. I didn't wanna spend like 300 bucks on a, you know, just basically

a minor convenience speaker.

Uh, so I, I ended up finding one that was, um.

You know, that was, uh, it, it worked.

I've got, actually, not only do I have it assembled and powered on, it's

actually already mounted to the wall.

Nice.

I,

job.

I, I had some free time today,

is it a

so

weird though with the sound, because I know you mentioned that you have

it mounted on the wall, which is

yeah,

your head.

Does it seem a little weird with the sound coming from behind

you rather than in front of

It is a little weird, uh, but like, I don't know.

It's, it's not that much different to me than having AirPods in, for example,

it, sorry.

There are two things.

One is the sound coming from behind you,

Uhhuh.

then the other thing is the left and right channels being flipped.

Yeah.

I don't, I don't think that's a,

Okay.

that, that literally just really hasn't, at least not I. It's

not something that made it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Um, but, but yeah.

But anyway, that, that was my project for the day and that project was completed.

Uh, now I'm

one off the list.

check one off the list.

Now I just have like 19 Amazon returns to get to.

It's okay.

Amazon's easy to deal with.

Yeah.

so before we continue, I think it's important to tell our listeners if

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Talking about tech and backup and data protection and restores and recoveries,

and how can I forget cybersecurity.

So please make sure to subscribe and if you actually wanna see us talking,

like actually see what we look like.

Uh, I do have a shorter beard now.

I. But still have the long hair.

Uh, we are also available on YouTube under the same channel, the backup wrap

Yeah.

if you wanna see what the two of us look like and our random facial expressions

and me staring off into the distance every once in a while, uh, a look.

And, uh, feel free to comment, uh, like we recently got a

comment on our YouTube channel.

It was one of those like backhanded compliments.

I, I, I, he, he actually comments pretty regularly on the channel and, and he

was like, uh, he basically said, Hey, these guys, it started, you start out.

These guys might not look like much, but, but they, they, you know, they

seem to know what they're talking about.

And I'm like, what is that supposed to be?

And he's like, you guys kind of look homeless.

And I'm.

I mean, the video was back when you had the longer beard.

I had like the same beard and then it was one that Mike was on, and Mike,

Mike has sort of his normal beard, but yeah, homeless, um, that's a bit harsh.

I, I, you know, but, um, anyway, so, so we're, we, we've got

a, an interesting one today.

I, it's, it's gonna start out I think, a little bit outside of our normal.

Scope of, of stuff that we talk about, but we're gonna bring it

back home to the things that we normal, that we normally talk about.

And, uh, this was, this was something that, go ahead.

and promise me that we will not get political because this

is not a political podcast.

I will promise that you will not.

Yeah, right.

Yeah.

I promise that because there will be some, some, some stuff mentioned.

Um, and this is just.

We're just, I, I think, I think it needs to be mentioned because

it is the point of view of the eu.

Um, and, and, and, and it's providing a point of view from which

we need to have the discussion.

So, um, and you, you sent me a bunch of articles and, and, and a PDF that,

um, the, the general, um, the general.

Gist of the, sort of the impetus of this discussion is that a number

of EU countries, companies, uh, and entities within those companies are

feeling that they can no longer trust the, the US and the US tech companies.

To be the sole provider of the services that they use.

Correct, right.

Uh, either sole provider or, um, or just to store data in a US cloud at all.

Right.

Um, and the, you know, it, it comes from things like the Cloud Act that was

passed several years ago, which I would refer to as the Modern Patriot Act.

Um, for those of you that don't remember the Patriot Act,

uh, you know, it basically.

It was enacted after nine 11 and it, it gave us governments a a little bit,

well, many would say a lot of extra access to basically it, it sort of.

Undid, what I would say, fifth Amendment type protections for your data.

If, if, um, the terrorism was, was suspected or whatever, right.

And the, the Cloud Act, which was passed in 2018 was similar.

Uh, there were some comments and some, some stuff from the current administration

that added to the, to the mix.

And so they're feeling, uh, just in general, um, that they.

That the, the sort of friendly relationship and the trust that they

have, not just in the companies, but in the government that the companies are

running under that they don't have the kind of trust that they used to have.

And then there was, uh, some comments.

There was actually one of the links that you sent me had a,

had a link in it to a Dutch, um.

You know, discussion, which I of course gave to AI and had it take a look at that

page and they, and they were basically saying that there was this ongoing

discussion about how that governments over there would say that like, well,

US cloud providers can't really see our real IP addresses or something like this.

And that just totally ended up not being true.

Right.

And so, so, so it's a combination of both.

So politics, some laws, and also some technology where, you know, and, and.

How?

How would you comparing EU law to US law, when it comes to matters of privacy, how

would you summarize the difference there?

Yeah, EU is very, user privacy is paramount.

Right.

it comes to laws and regulations with GDPR in the US it is more lax.

That's putting it mildly, I think.

well.

I think those, some states are trying to do the best that they can, right.

California with CCPA and other things like that.

But there's no sort of federal standard that

Yeah, there's,

data.

there, there's no federal standard and even laws like GD or uh,

CCPA, there's no bite to it.

Right.

You've done some access requests using CCPA and you're like, Hey,

how'd you get my information?

Like you, you know, and, and, and you have found it to be a mixed bag.

Is that a fair statement?

yeah.

Some companies are like, yeah, uh, we're not gonna tell you.

And sometimes it actually required getting the attorney General for California

involved in order to actually get them to

Yeah.

me back my data.

Isn't that hilarious?

Yes.

used it, interestingly enough, um, I used it when, uh, uh, for tax time.

Um, I went to, uh, the, the stores that I frequent, Amazon, home Depot,

and Lowe's, and I said, give me all the data that you have on me.

I. And, and they, and they, and all of them except for Home Depot, very quickly

said, Hey, here's a giant ass spreadsheet of all the stuff that you bought for

us, the dates, the names, the thing.

And I was gonna use it basically as like a receipt kind of thing.

Uh, home Depot did not, interestingly enough, uh, right away do that.

And then I was like, Hey, home Depot.

You're supposed to gimme all the stuff you have on me, and I know

you have my purchase history because it's on your computers.

When I go to your store and they're like, oh, oh yeah, sorry about that.

Here you go.

And they gave it to me.

So I got a spreadsheet again of everything that I bought from Home Depot.

Home Depot, which for the record is a lot, um, especially, especially since

Lowe's changed their return policy.

And I'm no longer shopping at Lowe's unless I have no other choice.

Um, home Depot, if you would like to sponsor this podcast,

please reach out to us.

And Lowe's, if you would like to change your stupid new return policy, which

for the record is if you go past 90 days, like so, just for those that

don't buy at these stores, right?

Home Depot, if you have a receipt, uh, you're going to, you can return.

Right, period.

If, if you don't have a receipt, you can even, you can generally, like within

reason, you can do store credit, but even if you have a receipt, I literally

have an experience from not that long ago where I came in and I had a project

that I started like a year and a half before and it was a year and a half later

and I, I never got to the project that I had like $300 worth of stuff, but I had

the receipt, they gave me store credit.

Right.

Lowe's.

I had a similar experience where I had a project that went 91 days,

literally 91 days, and I went back with like $30 worth of stuff.

And Lowe's was like, you're past our return window.

We, and we no longer do store credit.

And I was like, well, I no longer give you money.

Um, anyway.

No one cares.

No one cares.

Anyway, we're back to eu.

We're back eu.

So,

So

in

yeah, go ahead.

are more sort of.

User privacy centric, right?

They do worry about their data, right?

This is where everyone, if you've ever seen the cookie banner popups, right?

And you're like, why are they always asking me do I wanna

share my data or accept cookies?

Yeah,

driven by the eu.

yeah, yeah.

And you know, we could, we could have a different discussion as to

how effective the GDPR has been.

There are some that feel that it really hasn't been as effective as they would

like, but it still goes to the fact.

That they view data privacy paramount and they view, in this case we're

also talking about data sovereignty,

Yep.

Or digital sovereignty is actually the term.

And so this, we're now actually talking about governmental data and they're saying

they cannot trust storing that data, especially over on another, you know,

basically specifically the US' technology.

Yeah.

And go ahead.

And I think it's important, like as you mentioned, data sovereignty, right?

It isn't just a matter of, hey, public cloud provider X has a Bitbucket or

a place, a data center in Switzerland that I could store my data in.

Because to them, that's not good enough.

Because those US companies, those US employees, right, they

have access to that data, right?

Or to the, at least the infrastructure there, right?

They have access to logs, maybe logs are being sent back to

the US for troubleshooting, all the rest of that stuff.

And therefore it doesn't meet that notion of data sovereignty, which a

Yeah.

European governments are expecting.

Yeah.

And, and this, and that's the stuff to which that I was referring to

earlier where they're like, well, we thought they couldn't see the stuff.

And no, they can totally see the stuff.

Right.

And I, I, I, before the call, I made this statement, and I'll make it again.

I, I think they're seeing.

Our like cloud facilities in, within those company, within those countries,

the same way we see like TikTok.

Which, which is run in the us but it's, you know, there is this, this, this

connection to the Chinese government, which they say isn't there, but, you

know, there's too big of a concern.

And so, uh, you know, we, they passed a law that said that we

were gonna get rid of TikTok.

Uh, now there's a whole other thing going on on that, but I,

I'm just saying that that's, they, they view it in the same distrust.

And And from like a public cloud provider, right?

Or any infrastructure provider, right?

Or a SaaS service, right?

It's not even just public cloud, right?

It is difficult to sort of isolate and split up all of these various

Yeah.

centers and regions because you don't get the scale right?

You don't get the efficiencies.

You have to manage, have multiple ops teams and everything else,

and it just becomes complicated.

Yeah.

Agreed.

And the um.

Uh, so the question that, that, that I, you know, that the question

that, that we wanna talk about is, well, let's say I am a company or a

governmental entity that wants to, um, that wants to be more sovereign, right?

That wants to ensure that my data is being stored in a country that I

control with privacy, that I control.

You know, number one, how do I actually do that?

And number two, how does this affect, like what I've been

doing with regards to backup,

All the

right?

about.

All the stuff we talk about.

So, um, so what there's, as I see it, there's basically

two choices that you have.

And I don't mean company names, I just mean two broad choices.

One is you can in, in-house it, and the two is you can, you can find a 100%.

You know, Europeans, uh, housed company, uh, to, to to store your data.

And I think let's talk about the, let's talk about both of those.

And so I just wanna talk through an example because it works easier

for us and probably our listeners.

Let's just assume that today you're on Microsoft 365.

Yeah.

Right.

So you use them for email

And, your productivity tools?

They're two choices, right?

So the first is you bring it on premises.

you're deciding, okay, I'm gonna run it locally, I'm gonna manage everything.

And this kind of reminds me of like the old days when people used to

manage exchange on premises, right?

And

What

saw how.

is that?

I, I like, I like lotus notes,

Right, but they used to manage it on premises and then they're like, Hey,

Microsoft, you have this cloud thing.

I don't have to worry about patching and managing and everything else.

I just manage my users and their emails.

right?

they moved over to Microsoft 365 and that's kind of like

the one approach, right?

The first approach you talked about

Yeah.

Is sort of that, okay, I'm gonna go find a local provider to host

my stuff and they'll manage it.

Right.

I know we did a prior episode, I wanna say it was earlier this year, about a provider

who offered exchange as a service.

Mm-hmm.

And we knew what happened with that.

Right?

And

Yeah.

Didn't go well,

to, I'm referring to Rackspace.

Right.

right?

ended up with a ransomware attack.

They lost all of their end users data.

It took weeks for them to even try to recover some of the mailboxes to Microsoft

365, and in the end, they shut down their exchange as a service business.

Right.

Yeah.

So this was hosted exchange, which is the one sort of

cloudy type alternative to 365.

If you don't wanna run exchange on-prem there, there are a number of companies

that are doing Exchange as a service, and they were, they were one of the

biggest, if not the biggest in the us And then, you know, poof happens.

Yeah,

and so what I would say is.

No matter, you know, my opinion hasn't changed regarding like backup

and data protection, no matter what you choose as an alternative to

Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace.

Um, is there anybody else like that?

That's, that's pretty much it, right?

In terms of, yeah.

Yeah.

Um, or, or any of the, or any other services, no matter what you choose.

There needs to be third party backup of that thing because although

you have a, you have a good story.

You know, the Rackspace story of the,

Mm-hmm.

Hosted exchange and that one, that one was so kind of sad because it was

all made possible because of a patch.

That Rackspace could have installed but did not install, um, in a timely manner.

And, um, and two weeks passed by between when the patch was available

and when the attack happened.

And they, they could have totally addressed that, but they did not.

And so that's why mistakes happened, right?

The and, and, and, you know, and, and, yeah.

I mean, the fault to this Rackspace is because, who else's fault would it be?

I don't know, like.

How much blame there is, per se.

Right.

You know, did they do something wrong?

Did they just make the wrong priorities?

Were there other things that they were worried about?

Did they, I know that in, in this case there was, there was, um,

There was a workaround.

Well, There was an issue with the first,

there was an issue with the first batch.

Right.

Um, and there was a belief that this workaround would address it, but

there was, there was a new problem with, so anyway, so there, there was.

They made that choice.

But the thing is, no matter who it is, 365 Rackspace, you know,

whoever mistakes happen and.

This is why we have the 3, 2, 1 rule,

Yeah.

right?

That you, you have something else, you have another copy of your data that

doesn't have the same risk profile, and so you don't, you don't use Microsoft 365

and then just use their backup system, what, whatever backup system as I, as I

make quotes in the air and you don't use hosted exchange on some provider and then.

Not back it up and then just use their backup side.

'cause some of them do offer backup.

Right.

You, you use third party backup.

Right.

And, and it's not just because you and I both used to work at a

third party backup company, it's because it's basic backup design.

Uh, and in fact we've also talked about a previous case of an EU cloud provider,

Mm-hmm.

backup and then lost their customer's data due to a fire.

Yeah, that would maybe OVH.

That was so, that was so bad.

Uh, and that one, that one I'm definitely just, they did bad, right?

Because they had the backup system literally in the same data center.

And then, um, yeah.

So once that happened, you know, they, it burned up both the, uh, both the

primary and the backup at the same time, which is why you have it somewhere else.

Yep.

So

Um, yeah.

also think of a third scenario, which I

Okay.

gonna be the more problematic.

So we haven't even really touched upon like the data protection aspects yet.

Right.

We're just looking at what are the options for replacing your production.

Microsoft 365, in this example, I.

Mm-hmm.

think what becomes more challenging is if you look at a Microsoft 365 a Google

workspace, or if you look at even like any of the public cloud providers, they're

not just offering a single service, right?

It's not just email for Microsoft 365, it's email, it's

SharePoint, it's teams, it's.

Right.

Word, right?

It's all of these things all rolled into one package, and now if I'm looking

for an alternative, it's much harder for me to find that full package,

Yeah.

There are one provider that provides all of those capabilities.

I might need to pick 3, 5, 7 providers

Hmm.

replace my functionality.

And, you know, one of, one of the government.

Uh, they were saying, you know, we're, we're moving off of, of 365.

So no matter what you choose, whether you choose another SaaS

provider, you choose hosted exchange.

Like we're, we're just using exchange as a, you know, as a, as an example,

if you decide to go with, with.

There is no other provider of Microsoft 365.

So assuming you have another service that is an alternative for the SaaS.

Thing that you're trying to replace.

Or you can have, like in this case, you can go from 365 to hosted exchange,

but if you truly, in the case of that one government want to get rid of

Microsoft and you wanna get rid of all us, even software, um, first off, I

think you're really limiting yourself.

But that's just my, that's just my

Yeah.

Well.

you know?

But, but, but anyway, let me just finish the thing that you, if you're

gonna go on-prem with something.

No matter where you put your data, that data still needs to be protected.

That that's just, you know,

Yeah.

that's never gonna change, in my opinion.

So I'm looking at my bookshelf right now and I have a book, I

dunno if you've ever heard about it.

It's called The World is Flat.

It's a book from like the early two thousands where basically

don't think it means what I think it means.

It's basically talking about globalization,

Yeah.

Yeah.

of globalization, it's no longer, okay?

You have India's uh, tech industry, you have the US tech industry.

It's companies are now spread throughout the world, and they benefit from that,

Yeah.

And so I wonder, even though the EU and governments and companies and

everyone else wants that independence,

Mm-hmm.

how feasible is it if you're taking open source software like a database?

Right.

That might, that database, the provider might be in the US if

you're picking up chips, right?

Where are those chips manufactured?

Right?

What about those hard drives?

What about all these other things, right?

It's like how far up or down the supply chain do you go to

say, yes, I'm truly independent?

Yeah, I think.

That you could say, like, indicate, again, going back to Microsoft, uh, 365, I think

you're definitely more, let's say, let's say you found out you really couldn't

get rid of the, the functionality of what is, what used to be called Exchange.

Um, I do think you could be a little more independent by running exchange

yourself or using a European based, um, hosted exchange provider.

You're still relying on the Microsoft software, but

You have more

short, short of supply chain attacks, I, I, I think it's not, it's nowhere near the

same as using a US-based cloud provider that happens to be headquartered in

the eu.

But I think though if I Microsoft, I'm trying to push all of my customers

existing and new to use, Microsoft 365.

Mm-hmm.

think I will really put as much focus on the on-prem version with all the

capabilities, with all the patches, with all the like functionality that

an enterprise would require from compliance security and everything else?

Or would I just sort of like check the box and say, yep, I have

something, or whatever I had before.

I'm just gonna kind of support it on an ongoing basis without really improving it.

Um, there was a lot of questions all at once, but I think what I, I, I, I

agree with you that it's a concern.

Having said that.

If my choices are a product that I already know and I'm used to and

a random SaaS product , which I'm guessing is not going to be the same,

it might be better, I don't know.

But there will be a learning curve that will be an issue, and there will

also be the issue of backing it up,

Yeah.

right?

I, I'm just saying that I, I, it, it still might be better.

Yeah.

And the learning curve, right?

It's the same thing that when we talk about switching backup vendors, When you

go from say, net backup to, uh, rubrik or Cohesity or whatever else, right?

There is sort of, you need to relearn certain processes, how the

technology works, and you may lose some functionality, but that may be

okay for you if you're not using it or you're willing to live without

Right.

Right?

And I think the same

Yeah.

Is here as well, right?

If you are switching from Microsoft 365 to say Libra office, right?

Maybe it doesn't matter, right?

Depending on the features and functionality you're

using, but maybe it does,

Yeah,

I think it's

yeah,

because I don't know if people have really done like that comparison sheet, right?

Of Microsoft 365 versus X,

yeah.

X is a different thing.

You know what I meant?

I know what you meant.

Um,

Because though that

but

never comes up for people, right?

It's like,

you have to say y now you have to say Y You can't say X, X is a brand,

Yes,

you have to say Y Um, I still call it Twitter anyway, but the, yeah, and,

and, and, and, and I guess it, it, it speaks to, and these are smart people.

And they know this, they know what you just said.

They're, they're well aware that, you know,

they know is not the same as Microsoft Office.

And, you know, maybe it's close.

Um, I don't know.

But they know whatever the difference is.

They know this, they know this stuff.

They, they looked at it, they're like, you know what?

It's good enough.

And, um, um.

production use,

Well, I'm just saying that,

yeah.

but Well, my, my point is they've made that decision and what I'm saying is it,

it just goes back to the beginning of the discussion that we were having that

how big of a deal they think this is.

They're like, we even, even if it's half the functionality,

we're willing to take that hit.

Because of the fact that we do not like the fact that the US

government is, is, has access to potential access to our data.

okay, so here's the question then.

So that's from like the production side, right?

So I'm deploying it across my users.

Mm-hmm.

wonder though, if they've thought or had the conversation about

what do we do from a backup,

Mm-hmm.

and maybe it's not needed anything specific, but.

Well let, well, let me just answer your question.

The answer is no.

They absolutely have not.

Like it just if, if my time in this industry has shown me anything, it's

that no one thinks about this question.

That's why, that's why we have to think about it, right?

No one thinks about this.

They're like, we have to make this change.

And then boom, they make the change.

And then it's like, you know, and then nobody's raising their hand and

go, you know, nobody wants to be the person to stop the, the project, right?

Um, and say, Hey, you know, are we backing it up?

So here's a question.

So let's say that someone's made the decision, right?

There's no questions about it, right?

It's like, okay, we have to march forward on this.

Yes, we understand there's gonna be reduced functionality.

As a backup person, what are some of my options or some of the things

I should be thinking about in terms of, okay, we're already flipping.

What do I need to do to be able to protect this?

Like are there options or things I could be using or thinking about?

Because I kind of think about this the same way as like previously

we didn't have backup for like all the different databases, right.

Or applications.

And

Yeah.

those days, people still managed to back it up, right?

It may not have been efficient, right?

But it was still doable.

And so just wanted to get your thoughts on what should people backup admins be

thinking about as they're looking at these new applications coming online?

Well, I think that.

It's gonna be similar to what we've seen in other spaces where you're going,

it's, it's the, the one step forward, two steps back kind of thing, right?

So they're like, so we're gonna step forward in a digital sovereignty.

Situation, but we're gonna step back in terms of backup and recovery, right?

So you, when you say, what did we do back in the day?

Well, back in the day before there were database agents, you ran a dump

and you, you dumped it to, like, you either dumped it to tape or

you dumped it to disc, and then you backed it up, you backed up that disc.

Right?

This is what I'm talking about at.

Going forward and going backwards.

Right.

Uh, this was the same thing, like this is the same opinion

that I had about containers,

Mm-hmm.

right?

The whole concept of containers.

It sounds fascinating, it sounds it's all great, but like, how

are we backing this stuff up?

And they start talking about scripts and stuff like that.

Oh my, oh my God, it hurts my brain.

Right?

It's doable.

I'll, I'll, I guess the only thing, the one thing we just want to get across is

just make sure you're thinking about it.

Make sure you have a solution, whatever it is.

Maybe it's not as good as just paying for a third party service

that automatically backs it up.

But, um, but just make sure that you're not just picking a product

just because it's not US based.

Um, and, um, I mean there are a lot of open source.

Productivity tools, open source alternatives to a

lot of products out there.

Um.

There isn't really this concept of open source cloud service.

That's, that's not really a thing.

But you, there are open source backup products.

There are open source office products, there are open source, a lot of things.

Right.

Um, and I, you know, I use some of them, right?

I, I don't want to pay hundreds of dollars for a tool that

I use once or twice a year.

Right.

So I have, I have, um.

Um, gimp, for example, I don't have Adobe Photoshop, I have gimp.

Um, and, uh, but now it, you know, I use, um, Canva and I'm paying for that.

But, but yeah, so I, that's, that's all I really just want

people to think about, right?

Yeah.

Um,

And so I guess one other question I had for you is, we've always talked

about how most enterprises back up, like the major applications,

mm-hmm.

else sort of gets ignored, right?

All these secondary applications, open source stuff, right?

It's like everyone do your own thing.

Mm-hmm.

feel like with this push there is a possibility for new businesses

to be started new focus to be, uh.

To be placed on all those other things which have been left on

the side of the road to sort of be ignored all these years, all these

applications and all that data that's

Yeah.

in environments, but

Yeah,

never been seen as important.

well, having, you know, for, for a long time I was pushing backup

companies to support stuff.

Then I worked for a backup company and I was pushing them to support stuff.

The answer really all comes down to are there enough people I. Are there

enough companies, entities that are willing to pay for this thing that

will pay for my development to go figure out how to back up this thing.

Right.

And also, a second question, is the company or open source development

group that's behind this particular product, are they friendly?

Are they, can I work with them?

Can I, can, will they gimme an API, uh, and access to that?

Or will they be more like Microsoft 365 that fought for years?

Um, you know, and basically the backup vendors had to.

Pretend to be WebEx.

They used OWA, they just pretended to be a user and that's how they backed up 365.

Um, so if, if, if the open source, if there's enough people that are using

it and, or not just open source, but, but let's just say just a product

that's EU centric or EU based and, and there's a lot of 'em, right?

Or just not, not.

US based.

Yeah.

Right.

Um, uh, oddly enough, um, one of the other countries where a lot of

technology comes from is Israel,

Yep.

which has its own challenges right now.

Right.

Um, so again, this is, this is why all these countries are thinking,

Hey, let's, you know, let's, let's bring stuff back home.

It's just that thing with your comment about the world is flat.

Um.

It's true, right?

Um, how it's gonna be hard for you to do it.

So just, and all I wanna do is just whatever you do, I don't care what you

do, just make sure you backend it up.

That's all.

That's all.

Um, you know, 'cause it's, it's one thing to sort of deal with the issues of having

to move data and applications and relearn everything, all that kind of stuff.

Just make sure you, that you don't end up then losing your data because of, yeah.

All right.

I think we covered this.

Um,

Do, was there anything else you wanted to touch upon this,

no, um,

by

I guess that's pretty much it.

Yeah.

I should mention, I know we did talk heavily about Microsoft 365 in this

Yeah,

but that was just an example.

It could be any cloud provider, it could be any SaaS provider, right?

It could be

We just.

that

Yeah, we, we used it for two reasons.

One is it's an example that everybody knows, and also it was specifically

mentioned in one of the articles, we'll, we'll put some links to these articles.

Um, and, uh, that they specifically, was it the Dutch government that they were

specifically saying that they're, they're gonna move from 365 to Libra office.

Um, anyway.

All right.

Thanks for the chat as always.

Anytime Curtis.

And, uh, thanks to the listeners, you know, you're, why we do this?

That is a wrap.