It’s time to talk about the hidden costs of rentier capitalism in IT, the rise of „bullshit administration,“ and why true digital sovereignty is the smarter business move.
For the last decade, the IT industry has known only one direction: into the Cloud. The narrative sold by Silicon Valley giants was simple: „Move your infrastructure to us, and your headaches will disappear.“ No more server maintenance, no more hardware investments, just a flexible monthly subscription.
It sounded perfect. But years later, a creeping normalization has set in. Many European SMEs may not even realize it, but the promise of simplicity has silently mutated into a labyrinth of complexity. The rising costs and administrative overhead are no longer questioned—they are simply accepted as the unavoidable ‚price of doing business.‘ The financial black hole is real, but it has become the invisible status quo.
It is time to challenge the narrative. Here is why moving back to a „Sovereign Stack“—hosted in Europe, controlled by you—might be the best strategic decision for 2024 and beyond.
1. The Trap of „Rentier Capitalism“
In economic theory, „rent-seeking“ describes gaining wealth without creating new value. The modern SaaS (Software as a Service) model is the perfect embodiment of this.While SaaS is not rent-seeking in the classical economic sense, its monopolistic market structure increasingly exhibits rentier-like dynamics.
When you buy a server or a software license, you own an asset. When you subscribe to Microsoft 365 or Azure, you are merely a tenant. You own nothing. The problem with being a tenant in a monopolistic market is that the landlord sets the rules. We are seeing a shift where features that used to be standard are moved to premium tiers (like security features moving to E5 licenses), effectively raising prices without adding value. This is the „Enshittification“ of the cloud: once you are locked in, the service degrades or gets more expensive, because you have nowhere else to go.
The Alternative: Owning your infrastructure (e.g., via dedicated servers in European data centers or on-premise IT) converts unpredictable OpEx (Operating Expenses) back into predictable, controllable costs.
2. Trading „Repair Work“ for „Bullshit Administration“
Anthropologist David Graeber famously coined the term „Bullshit Jobs“ for roles that exist primarily to manage bureaucracy rather than create value. In the IT sector, the migration to the Cloud has triggered precisely this phenomenon. We have not reduced IT workloads; we have merely shifted them from productive technical work (fixing systems) to reproductive bureaucratic work (managing the vendor).
- The Old World (The Craftsman): The IT admin fixes a server, optimizes a database query, or tunes a spam filter. The relationship between effort and result is direct. It is the work of a craftsman maintaining a tool.
- The New World (The Bureaucrat): The Cloud admin spends days navigating constantly changing portals, auditing „Conditional Access Policies,“ and managing complex licensing schemes that require a PhD to understand.
Enter Mark Fisher and the „Bureaucracy of Control“ Cultural theorist Mark Fisher described a state of „Capitalist Realism,“ where systems generate artificial bureaucracy just to justify their own existence. In the SaaS economy, this is painfully visible. Because you pay a monthly subscription, the vendor must constantly „innovate“ to justify the recurring cost. They rename services (Azure AD becomes Entra ID), shuffle interfaces, and force new features.
This creates what Fisher called a „bureaucracy of control.“ We are no longer securing infrastructure; we are performing „simulated security.“ IT departments are now tasked with ticking boxes to increase a gamified „Secure Score“ on a dashboard. Often, this becomes a performative act—satisfying an algorithm’s checklist rather than addressing the specific, real-world threat model of the company.
The „Cloud Realism“ Trap Fisher famously observed that „it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.“ Today, this paralysis has infected IT strategy. For many European decision-makers, it has become easier to imagine the end of their business than a future without Microsoft 365.
We suffer from a collective „Cloud Realism“—the fatalistic belief that running your own mail server or file system is „unprofessional,“ „dangerous,“ or „impossible,“ even though it was the standard just a decade ago. We are burning highly paid, creative IT talent on governance, compliance, and „box-ticking“ instead of building robust, efficient systems. A sovereign stack—based on stable Linux, Proxmox, and open standards—breaks this cycle. It allows admins to be engineers again, not just compliance officers for a US corporation.
3. The Geopolitical Imperative
Europe is often described as a „digital colony.“ We export raw data and capital to the US and import finished software services. This is not just an economic issue; it is an existential strategic risk.
Under the US CLOUD Act, American providers are legally compelled to provide US authorities access to data under their control, regardless of where the server physically sits. This renders the concept of „Data Residency“ (e.g., hosting in Frankfurt or Vienna) legally irrelevant.
This is not a conspiracy theory; it is admitted by the providers themselves. In Switzerland—a nation defined by its neutrality—Microsoft executives have publicly admitted in interviews that they cannot guarantee that US authorities will not access customer data stored in Swiss data centers. If the US government demands it, the encryption keys must be handed over, bypassing local laws.
The danger of this dependency became chillingly clear during the recent surveillance scandals surrounding the International Criminal Court (ICC). The pressure campaign and digital surveillance targeting Prosecutor Karim Khan demonstrated a simple truth: In a world of sharpening geopolitical conflicts, your data is never neutral. If it resides on the infrastructure of a foreign hegemon, it can be weaponized against you.
For a European company, relying on US hyperscalers creates a permanent conflict with GDPR and exposes trade secrets to foreign jurisdictions. True sovereignty means knowing exactly where your data is and who holds the keys. A European stack—hosted in Austria or Germany, running on open standards—is the only architecture resilient against geopolitical shifts across the Atlantic.
4. The „Repatriation“ ROI: The Hard Numbers
Leaving the cloud sounds daunting. The migration costs are the „moat“ that big providers rely on to keep you locked in. But the Return on Investment (ROI) of repatriation is real, significant, and verifiable.
To understand the true cost, we cannot look at just one month. We must look at the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) over 5 years. These numbers are not universal. They represent a typical, regulated European SME with Windows-based workloads and security requirements. Different workloads may yield different results—but the structural cost dynamics remain the same.
The Scenario:
- Company Size: 50 Employees.
- Workstations: 40 active users working on Terminal Servers (Remote Desktop) for maximum security and ease of management.
- Full Infrastructure included: This calculation covers the entire backend: 2x Domain Controllers (AD), File Server, Application/Database Server, Mail Server (Mailcow), and Firewall/VPN.
Crucial Premise: Productivity over „Feature Bloat“
It is important to note that this comparison focuses on the functional essentials required to run a business. Microsoft 365 includes advanced collaboration features like real-time co-authoring (e.g., five people editing an Excel sheet simultaneously) or deep SharePoint integrations. However, experience shows that the vast majority of traditional SMEs do not rely on these features for their daily operations. They need stable access to their ERP system, secure Email, and standard file access. By stripping away the „nice-to-have“ collaboration features that are often unused but paid for, the Sovereign Stack delivers the exact performance an SME needs without the „bloat tax.“
We compare a Sovereign European Private Cloud (Virtualization Cluster on Dedicated Hardware) against a US Hyperscaler Stack (Microsoft 365 + Azure Virtual Desktop).
| Cost Category (5 Years Total) | The Sovereign European Stack (Dedicated Private Cloud Cluster) | The US Hyperscaler Stack (M365 Premium + Azure Virtual Desktop) |
| A. Setup & Migration (One-time IT Services) | € 7,200 (Cluster setup, Mailcow, VPN, Security hardening) | € 9,600 (Azure Architecture, Intune, Policies, Image Mgmt) |
| B. Infrastructure (Hardware) (Rent / Compute Costs) | € 24,000 (Rent for 2x High-Perf. Hosts + 1x Backup Server) | € 54,000 (Azure Compute for 40 users, Storage, Traffic, VPN-Gw) |
| C. Software Licenses (Perpetual vs. Subscription) | € 12,500 (Windows Server, User CALs, RDS CALs – Owned Asset) | € 0 (Everything is rented) |
| D. Subscriptions & Security (Recurring Costs) | € 21,000 (Managed Security: EDR, Mail-Relay, Monitoring) | € 66,600 (50x Microsoft 365 Business Premium) |
| E. IT Maintenance (5 Years of Operations) | € 57,600 (Technical Ops & Support) | € 86,400 (Governance, Compliance & Azure Management) |
| TOTAL TCO (5 Years) | € 122,300 | € 216,600 |
| Average Cost per Year | € 24,460 | € 43,320 |
| POTENTIAL SAVINGS | > € 94,000 |
What creates this massive difference?
- The „Year 2 Effect“: In the Sovereign Stack (Left), you buy your Windows licenses once. From Year 2 onwards, your costs drop significantly. In the Cloud (Right), you pay the subscription price forever—and likely more, as prices increase.
- The Power of Virtualization: You might ask: „Where are the costs for the Mail Server, the File Server, or the App Server on the left side?“ The answer is Virtualization (Proxmox). The dedicated hardware budgeted in Row B (Infrastructure) is powerful enough to run all these servers simultaneously as Virtual Machines. You don’t pay extra for a Mailcow server or a Database server; they simply share the massive resources (RAM/CPU) you have already rented. In the Public Cloud, every additional service or VM adds a new line item to your monthly bill.
- Governance Overhead: The Cloud requires constant management of policies, conditional access, and changing interfaces. The Sovereign Stack is stable. Once configured, it runs. This reduces the billable hours required for maintenance.
By choosing the sovereign path, this sample company frees up nearly €100,000 over five years. That is capital that can be invested in innovation, employees, or growth—rather than being transferred to a US corporation for rent.
5. Conclusion
The Courage to Be an Owner Staying in the US cloud is the path of least resistance. It aligns with the old IT adage: „Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM.“ While this mindset might protect a manager’s career in the short term, it actively harms the company’s bottom line in the long run. As our calculation shows, the premium for this perceived „safety“ is nearly €100,000 for a single SME. That is shareholder money burned for convenience.
Leaving the cloud—or „Cloud Repatriation“—is an act of emancipation. It requires courage from management to explain why they are not following the herd. But the reward is significant: You stop paying rent and start building assets. Those who turn back now are not moving backwards; they are acting as responsible stewards of their company’s future, prioritizing long-term value over short-term trends.
Hermann Himmelbauer, Jänner 2026