Europees-only alternatief voor IBM Cloud.
IBM Cloud sits in a specific niche: enterprise mainframe descendants, regulated industries with deep Red Hat dependencies, and customers who valued the IBM relationship for decades. International Business Machines Corporation is a US company; IBM Cloud EU regions (Frankfurt, Madrid, London) are EU-located but US-controlled. IBM has invested in "EU Sovereign Cloud" with operational separation, but the parent jurisdiction analysis matches every other US hyperscaler. For regulated workloads that need genuine EU sovereignty, the migration target is typically a managed Red Hat / OpenShift stack on EU sovereign infrastructure — preserving the operational model without the IBM jurisdiction.
"EU-regio" is geen soevereiniteit. Vier vragen bepalen het.
Data-residency vertelt waar de bits staan. Soevereiniteit vertelt welk rechtssysteem toegang kan afdwingen. Het antwoord moet op alle vier kloppen — anders is de stack niet soeverein.
Waar staat de data fysiek opgeslagen?
Niet "in de cloud" — welk datacenter, in welk land, onder welke rechtsmacht.
Wie zit er nog meer in uw datapad?
Iedere leverancier die data raakt: de CDN, de e-mailrelay, de error-tracker, de analytics-pipeline.
Wiens wetten kunnen openbaarmaking afdwingen?
Een leverancier met hoofdkantoor in de VS valt onder FISA 702 en de CLOUD Act — ook als de bits in Frankfurt staan.
Wie heeft daadwerkelijk de encryptiesleutels?
Als de cloudprovider zowel de data als de sleutels heeft, kan hij de data lezen — ongeacht welke DPA dan ook.
Faalt op rechtsmacht en sleutelbeheer.
EU-bits, Amerikaanse moedermaatschappij, US-subprocessoren in het standaardpad, sleutels beheerd door provider.
Slaagt op alle vier.
EU-gehost op EU-hoofdkantoor infrastructuur. Nul US-subprocessoren in het standaardpad. Klant- of EU-KMS-sleutels. Bij naam vermeld in uw Artikel 28 DPA.
Waarom teams weggaan IBM Cloud
IBM Cloud exits we have scoped tend to be triggered by post-DORA risk reviews in financial services, public-sector tenders that explicitly require non-US-jurisdictional infrastructure, or — increasingly — cost reviews where the IBM Cloud bill plus Cloud Pak licensing is an order of magnitude higher than the EU sovereign equivalent. The good news: most IBM Cloud workloads are running on Red Hat and Kubernetes, which port cleanly to managed Red Hat OpenShift on EU infrastructure or to Talos / vanilla K8s on Hetzner.
IBM Cloud diensten en hun EU-only equivalenten
Een migratie is niet "vervang één doos door een andere". De mapping hieronder is wat we draaien voor klanten die weggaan bij IBM Cloud op basis van Schrems II — volledige EU-rechtsmacht, geen US-moeder in het datapad.
| IBM Cloud dienst | EU-only alternatief | Engineering-notitie |
|---|---|---|
| Virtual Servers (Classic / VPC) | Hetzner Cloud, OVH Public Cloud, IONOS Compute, Scaleway | Standard VM migration; image rebuild. RHEL workloads can stay on RHEL with the same subscription on EU infrastructure, or move to Rocky/Alma for cost savings. |
| Cloud Object Storage (COS) | OVH Object Storage, Wasabi EU, Bunny Storage, MinIO self-hosted | COS is S3-compatible; migration is endpoint config plus data sync. |
| Db2 on Cloud | PostgreSQL or MySQL on EU managed (OVH, Aiven), or self-managed Db2 on EU dedicated for compatibility-critical workloads | Db2 → PostgreSQL migration is well-trodden; Db2 SQL has fewer dialect divergences than Oracle. Most mid-complexity Db2 workloads convert in 2–4 months. |
| IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service (IKS) | Scaleway Kapsule, OVH Managed K8s, IONOS K8s | IKS is upstream Kubernetes with IBM-specific addons; standard nginx-ingress and cert-manager replace IKS-specific equivalents. |
| OpenShift on IBM Cloud (ROKS) | Self-managed OpenShift on EU bare-metal (Hetzner, Leaseweb), or migrate to upstream Kubernetes on Scaleway Kapsule | For teams with deep OpenShift investment, self-managed OpenShift on EU dedicated servers preserves the operational model with EU jurisdiction. We deploy and operate this for clients. |
| Cloud Functions (IBM) | OpenFaaS, Knative on EU K8s, Scaleway Serverless Functions | IBM Cloud Functions is built on Apache OpenWhisk; OpenFaaS or Knative gives a similar developer experience. |
| API Connect / DataPower | Kong (self-hosted), KrakenD (ES), Tyk | For deep integration with IBM CICS or mainframe backends, the migration includes a re-architecture of the integration layer. |
| Watson AI services | Mistral AI (FR), Aleph Alpha (DE), self-hosted Llama / Qwen on EU GPUs | Mistral has clear sovereign positioning. Aleph Alpha was built specifically for EU sovereign AI. Both offer commercial APIs. |
| Cloud Pak for Data | Self-hosted equivalent on EU OpenShift: Apache Spark, JupyterHub, Airflow, Trino | The Cloud Pak is a packaged set of open-source tools; the same components run on EU OpenShift without IBM-specific glue. |
| Block Storage | Hetzner Volumes, OVH Block Storage, Scaleway Block Storage | Standard NVMe-backed volumes. |
| Direct Link / Transit Gateway | OVH vRack, Hetzner private networks, Megaport / EuNetworks for cross-DC connectivity | For hybrid setups, Megaport has strong EU presence and EU-jurisdictional billing. |
| Key Protect / Hyper Protect Crypto Services | Hashicorp Vault on EU infra, HSM-backed key management with EU-located HSMs | For FIPS 140-2 Level 4 requirements, EU HSM providers exist; we deploy to spec. |
Hoe we migreren af van IBM Cloud
Een typische mid-market migratie loopt in drie fasen. De getallen hieronder gaan uit van een team van 6-10 engineers en een gemiddeld complexe applicatie-stack.
Inventory & licensing review
Map IBM Cloud services to migration targets. Special attention to Cloud Pak licensing (per-core often) and Db2 (BYOL on EU infra is a path). Scope OpenShift workloads separately.
Infrastructure migration
VMs, networking, storage, K8s workloads moved to EU sovereign stack. CI/CD repointed. Watson API workloads moved to Mistral or self-hosted equivalents.
Db2 + OpenShift cutover
Db2 → PostgreSQL migration with logical replication where possible. OpenShift workloads moved to self-managed OpenShift on EU bare metal or to upstream K8s. Cutover with rollback plan.
IBM Cloud exits typically deliver 40–60% cost reduction in year 1, growing as IBM-specific licences (Cloud Pak, Db2 enterprise) are eliminated. The Cloud Pak elimination alone often justifies the migration project. For teams that retain self-managed OpenShift on EU infra, the licensing pattern shifts to per-cluster Red Hat subscription which is dramatically simpler than Cloud Pak.
Veelgestelde vragen
What about IBM EU Sovereign Cloud?
IBM markets EU Sovereign Cloud with operational separation (EU-resident staff, EU support, EU billing entity). The legal entity holding your data remains under IBM Corporation control, which means the CLOUD Act analysis applies. Like Oracle and Microsoft sovereign offerings, it is an improvement on the documentation but not full sovereignty.
Can we keep OpenShift but leave IBM Cloud?
Yes — this is a common pattern. Self-managed OpenShift on EU bare metal (Hetzner or Leaseweb dedicated) preserves the operational model. The Red Hat subscription transfers cleanly. We deploy and operate self-managed OpenShift for clients exiting IBM Cloud.
How does Db2 migration compare to Oracle migration?
Smaller scope for typical mid-market workloads. Db2 SQL is closer to standard ANSI SQL than Oracle PL/SQL; the conversion to PostgreSQL is mechanically simpler. A typical 200GB Db2 workload converts in 6–10 weeks; an equivalent Oracle workload would be 3–6 months.
What about Watson AI / watsonx?
For text and code workloads, Mistral AI (FR) is the strongest sovereign alternative. Aleph Alpha (DE) was built explicitly for EU sovereign AI use cases including regulated industries. For enterprise document understanding, both have offerings; for very specific Watson capabilities (e.g. NLU classification), the migration may require a re-architecture rather than a 1:1 swap.
Is IBM's long-standing EU presence relevant?
Operationally yes, jurisdictionally no. IBM has had EU staff and EU operations for decades; that affects support quality and contract negotiation, not the legal analysis. The Schrems II question is who can be compelled to disclose, and that's the parent corporation.
How long does an IBM Cloud exit take?
For infrastructure + simple Db2: 12–20 weeks. For full exit including OpenShift migration to self-managed and Db2 → PostgreSQL: 6–12 months. Cloud Pak retirements add complexity and time.
Plan je exit van IBM Cloud.
Gesprek van 30 minuten. We mappen je stack tegen EU-only alternatieven, schatten de migratie-inspanning en zeggen je of het de juiste keuze is.