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Comment by gtirloni | Hacker News Reader

Is there a UK-based company capable of offering the same services?

There is a specialist UK Government IaaS provider: https://ukcloud.com/

But AWS and MS have both deployed dedicated DCs for sensitive UK Government cloud requirements: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/whitepapers/latest/data-classifi... https://news.microsoft.com/en-gb/2017/09/21/police-uk-reache...

Those DCs can be audited in a way that the CSPs don't generally allow for "normal" customers.

> > Is there a UK-based company capable of offering the same services?

> There is a specialist UK Government IaaS provider:

So, no?

The answer is yes. Not sure how you took GPs response as no.

Unless you're interpreting the question as "does anyone that isn't AWS provide all AWS services" which is obviously not going to be true.

UKCloud had also been developing their Secret tier offering for a number of years and has a little traction from my understanding.

UKCloud are the worst provider I've ever worked with by some stretch.

Just a guess, but maybe they’re getting tired of paying suppliers excessive amounts to build inferior and slower-moving versions of what exists already?

No. There's not even a UK-based company that offers a decent interconnect to the NHS network that doesn't cost the earth.

AWS is probably genuinely the best tool for the job here.

If the UK is anything like the US the contractor would need to be UK citizens, servers in the UK in special data centers, and most, if not all, of the work would need to be done by UK citizens. There might be some very very high level talks with non UK citizens.

I am curious how it would work using the AWS tech that is probably built by a lot of non UK/US citizens. Maybe the UK will allow work done by US citizens.

Most big-name cloud providers have needed to do this in the past half decade because the GDPR necessitated that they warehouse EU-sourced data in a different infrastructure with different privacy and national exfiltration guarantees then the ones US law requires.

Yes but it has no citizenship requirements. It can all be off shored to anyone outside the EU.

Yes, not sure of there reasoning but hardly a inditement for GDS and the G-cloud offerings they afford local and countrywide government services.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_Government_G-Cloud

AWS is part of UK Gov G-Cloud.

aha, now that then explains the decision more then.

Rackspace are US-based but have a large UK office in West London that could offer these services. They have their own data centres there and UK data privacy laws restrict what can be sent abroad. No idea if there are any UK-incorporated cloud companies of a similar size though.

Oracle has UK datacentres in Scotland, used precisely in circumstances where location is important. Needless to say that not all operators are UK based though - Oracle's business model requires cheap manpower from developing countries...

See: https://www.oracle.com/uk/industries/government/central/

"Ensure Cloud Sovereignty" ... "...centralised, security-cleared, UK-based operations team..."

That stuff is caveated to hell and back in the actual contracts. Or at least it was when I was in Oracle a few years ago.

The UK government could create such a company, given the size of IT operations that the government has.

This could be a commercial entity that is owned by the government.

Would a UK.ltd company be able to easily hand over all the 'info' to the 'feds', though?

Very good point and this approach does afford a back-channel with plausible deniability.

After all - data held in a country is subject to the government of that country being able to demand/obtain access.

I would be very surprised if the data was hosted overseas.

It doesn't matter where the data is.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act

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