We researched publicly listed companies for each country in Europe, then used DNS lookups to identify the mail exchange records for each company’s domain. This let us determine what company they use as their email service or email security service providers. And as email is the foundation of most business tech suites, we expect most companies that use US-based email providers also use other their services, like cloud storage, for example.
Exactly. For as long as you still control the DNS records then you could switch to a european provider within mere hours. It would likely cost 10%-20% more but that’s it. The real kicker is Windows and Office licenses but likely companies would be greenlighted by their local governments to just pirate in these circumstances. And in the follow-up many would migrate to Linux so even a cut-off from security updates would mean an increased risk for a month or two until the move is complete. That’s it.
This isn’t just about Emails though. Companies that went to outlook and teams most likely pivoted to the MS cloud options like SharePoint and azure.
Sure there are alternatives available, but all data on there would be lost. Even with backups, it would take months to get another system running and properly migrate everything.
It’s doable but sure it would cost. Our company last year migrated from AWS to Azure and it does take time to set everything up again for sure. But that is pretty much only relevant for tech companies. And while it might hinder and delay their development teams, for administration and management I feel it is indeed only emails and document storage. And some custom tools to fulfil local laws. But in europe that part anyway runs on SAP and european tools.
So basically you throw of your development schedule by some months and that’s it. It’s not for free but it likely wont tank the company or even the project.
I mean there are frictions but web office and sharepoint could be changed for nextcloud+collabora and that is ready and commercially available, same for other services. Likely just a bit more expensive.
Piracy is how sanctioned countries like russia do it. I guess sanctions and killing all trade is painful, but I don’t feel like software licenses are the decisive and most hurtful thing.
If US email providers were forced to stop serving European users then AWS, Microsoft, Google and so on too, which I think has a lot more impact than your mail not working.
I feel it’s very important to point out that specifically email is one of the most common things to outsource. Hosting your own email is simply one of the harder things to run on your own, having to deal with anti-spam measures, IP reputation tracking and the risk of other providers blocking you if one of your users are compromised and used to send spam.
My point being that yes, you are somewhat likely to use other Cloud products but it’s not a good indicator for how dependent the core business is on cloud providers.
Tracking specifically email is probably the best thing if your goal is to create an infographic where the dependence numbers are as high as possible though.
This is my personal experience as well with small companies: mail servers are usually in the cloud, company servers are usually on premise, cloud backups are usually with smaller regional companies. Assuming that the mail server is indicative of every other digital activity, is a flawed methodology.
Indeed and the only thing I have ever seen a larger company running is Microsoft Exchange, but MS is actively pushing to cloud here. I also know a few people who work with Exchange and they kind of hate it.
The option has the traditional open source stack I guess with Postfix, Dovecot, Spamassassin, some Webmail client, and then you have to make sure that SPF, DMARC, and DKIM signing works… It becomes a lot so I understand why none willingly wants to deal with this. That said there are some more modern alternatives like Stalwart mail server that combines the first three services into one and something I’m considering to try out.
So “larger companies” are using jitsi for meetings? My experience is that they’ve never heard of it. To them zoom is the only alternative to teams. The most enlightened ones use google meet to the awe of others.
And it would not “go dark” for more than 24 hours. It would however crash the NASDAQ pretty hard as the talking point in all EU companies as soon as email is restored would be “ok, what else do we need to bring back? Give me the list of EU and Chinese alternative to everything US we currently use.”
Banking is actually probably the biggest dependency, with EU working hard at making it possible to operate in the case VISA and Mastercard stop serving local businesses, like they did to the ICC
Src
I don’t think this proofs anything. Would it be painfull?.. yes… would they go dark?..no
Exactly. For as long as you still control the DNS records then you could switch to a european provider within mere hours. It would likely cost 10%-20% more but that’s it. The real kicker is Windows and Office licenses but likely companies would be greenlighted by their local governments to just pirate in these circumstances. And in the follow-up many would migrate to Linux so even a cut-off from security updates would mean an increased risk for a month or two until the move is complete. That’s it.
This isn’t just about Emails though. Companies that went to outlook and teams most likely pivoted to the MS cloud options like SharePoint and azure.
Sure there are alternatives available, but all data on there would be lost. Even with backups, it would take months to get another system running and properly migrate everything.
It’s doable but sure it would cost. Our company last year migrated from AWS to Azure and it does take time to set everything up again for sure. But that is pretty much only relevant for tech companies. And while it might hinder and delay their development teams, for administration and management I feel it is indeed only emails and document storage. And some custom tools to fulfil local laws. But in europe that part anyway runs on SAP and european tools.
So basically you throw of your development schedule by some months and that’s it. It’s not for free but it likely wont tank the company or even the project.
Well, hard to “just pirate” office365, teams or sharepoint. European institutions sold their asses and the public sector is in the deepest pond
I mean there are frictions but web office and sharepoint could be changed for nextcloud+collabora and that is ready and commercially available, same for other services. Likely just a bit more expensive.
Piracy is how sanctioned countries like russia do it. I guess sanctions and killing all trade is painful, but I don’t feel like software licenses are the decisive and most hurtful thing.
So this is just a Proton ad.
If US email providers were forced to stop serving European users then AWS, Microsoft, Google and so on too, which I think has a lot more impact than your mail not working.
I feel it’s very important to point out that specifically email is one of the most common things to outsource. Hosting your own email is simply one of the harder things to run on your own, having to deal with anti-spam measures, IP reputation tracking and the risk of other providers blocking you if one of your users are compromised and used to send spam.
My point being that yes, you are somewhat likely to use other Cloud products but it’s not a good indicator for how dependent the core business is on cloud providers.
Tracking specifically email is probably the best thing if your goal is to create an infographic where the dependence numbers are as high as possible though.
This is my personal experience as well with small companies: mail servers are usually in the cloud, company servers are usually on premise, cloud backups are usually with smaller regional companies. Assuming that the mail server is indicative of every other digital activity, is a flawed methodology.
Indeed and the only thing I have ever seen a larger company running is Microsoft Exchange, but MS is actively pushing to cloud here. I also know a few people who work with Exchange and they kind of hate it.
The option has the traditional open source stack I guess with Postfix, Dovecot, Spamassassin, some Webmail client, and then you have to make sure that SPF, DMARC, and DKIM signing works… It becomes a lot so I understand why none willingly wants to deal with this. That said there are some more modern alternatives like Stalwart mail server that combines the first three services into one and something I’m considering to try out.
So “larger companies” are using jitsi for meetings? My experience is that they’ve never heard of it. To them zoom is the only alternative to teams. The most enlightened ones use google meet to the awe of others.
So probably, Bulgaria is exposed to Russia and Yandex instead.
“Who is using gmail internally?”
I am surprised that so many do not, actually.
And it would not “go dark” for more than 24 hours. It would however crash the NASDAQ pretty hard as the talking point in all EU companies as soon as email is restored would be “ok, what else do we need to bring back? Give me the list of EU and Chinese alternative to everything US we currently use.”
Banking is actually probably the biggest dependency, with EU working hard at making it possible to operate in the case VISA and Mastercard stop serving local businesses, like they did to the ICC