
What Has Become of the Dream of Decentralised IT?
A Journey into History
It wasn’t that long ago—those of us of a certain age will remember—when software had to be purchased on physical media and installed locally. Dialing into the internet was still an audible event, and it wasn’t exactly cheap either.
Even back then, the idea of decentralised structures was already taking shape. In the 1980s, the first “peer-to-peer” networks emerged, Unix was developed, and in the 1990s, the Open-Source movement began to take hold. Websites and servers already existed that were decentralised and reachable across the network. But even these servers (and a server was essentially just a slightly different type of computer) had to be located somewhere and needed to be backed up to ensure redundancy in case of failure.
However, computers and internet connections became steadily faster and more widespread. The internet was standardised in many ways, but it still retained its fundamentally decentralised nature. It was not, or at least not easily, possible to suppress free exchange over the internet through centralised control structures.
Decentralised IT – At Its Core a Good Idea
With the growing importance of the internet and the ever-expanding variety of end devices (from smartphones to PCs), the significance of decentralised IT increased. More and more services and software were no longer installed locally but operated on servers and accessed via the browser. The idea behind this was simple: Software could be provided in the cloud, without the need for significant installation and maintenance effort, and scaled across a wide user base. The cloud itself could be operated in a decentralised and redundant manner—if one server failed, it could seamlessly switch to another. Services could be provided in a standardised manner and updated at the push of a button. As long as there was an internet connection, the service would be available. Here, concepts like “virtualisation” and “containerisation” play a key role, which could make interesting topics for future blog posts.
Soon, all major companies jumped on this bandwagon. They operated their own servers for internal communication, ERP and inventory management, HR, services, etc. During this time, companies like SAP and Atlassian became dominant players in these fields.
Decentralised IT on Steroids – The Hyper-Scalers
Operating redundant servers in-house was a major financial step forward. And if these servers were decentralised, it positively affected the resilience of the entire company.
“But,” some of them thought, “why should every company build its own server instance? Isn’t there a huge cost-saving potential here?”
This argument had some merit—after all, servers had to be provisioned at full capacity even if they weren’t 100% utilised. One of the companies that operated the most servers at the time—Amazon—then developed a new business model: Why not rent out its own server capacity to other companies?
Amazon, or rather AWS, then developed intelligent protocols that allowed server power to be provisioned on demand. A company that required little server capacity no longer had to rent and maintain an entire server. Large companies, like Deutsche Bahn, could flexibly add server capacity as needed. As a result, they only paid for what they used, saving on the costs of their own server infrastructure, redundancy, and staff.
The Impact of Hyper-Scalers on Our Everyday Lives
Today, hyper-scalers like AWS, Google Cloud Platform, Alibaba Cloud, and Microsoft Azure have become indispensable in our daily lives. Businesses of all sizes rely on them to scale their services globally. Through these platforms, our private chats and video calls, email services, streaming, shopping, the software in our cars and gadgets, gaming, AI, and everything else we do online is powered. But without them, even the business world would grind to a halt: Trains wouldn’t run, supermarkets would close, flights wouldn’t take off, bookings would stop. Few people would be able to pay, shop, refuel, or charge. Entire industries would be paralysed, and logistics would be thrown into chaos. Power outages, emergency operations in hospitals, civil unrest, and chaos could be real consequences.
Conclusion: Distribution = Resilience = Sovereignty
A scenario like the one described above is unlikely—but by no means impossible. The risks are higher than ever:
- Terrorists and state actors have long targeted the (few) undersea internet cables as a potential target for attacks. And the increasingly popular satellite internet, like Starlink, is operated by companies many people don’t trust.
- Cyberattacks can increasingly focus on individual, enormous companies, where the potential damage is much greater. Just in September, cloud provider Salesforce had 1.5 billion customer records stolen.
- Politically and ideologically, trust in the USA is diminishing—but nearly all hyper-scalers are still in American hands. However, the EU is not necessarily a pioneer in decentralised ideas, as recent moves toward chat control show.
- The sovereignty of individuals and businesses over their data is increasingly being questioned. Legislative initiatives, like the EU’s push for chat control, increasingly target the central providers themselves.
- Wars and civil unrest make it more important than ever that we, as a society, are set up to be redundant and resilient.
How decentralised are we still? I see both light and shadow right now: On the one hand, the move towards decentralised services in the cloud has led to a new centralisation—not just of structures but also of providers, who have successfully resisted the creation of an open standard cloud API (for easier switching). As a result, our economy has become highly dependent, and society has become more fragile.
On the other hand, outages like the recent one at AWS, or the one last year at Crowdstrike, are slowly leading to a shift in thinking within business and politics. Digital sovereignty is once again at the forefront of discussions. New providers are emerging, even in Europe (e.g. OVHcloud or the GAIA-X initiative), and new approaches to decentralised IT are being discussed. One can only hope they arrive in time.
In the meantime, however, you should also consider: Where is your business, and even you personally, dependent on central providers? And how can you—at a reasonable economic cost—reduce this dependency (e.g. through a multi-cloud strategy or the use of FOSS and open-source software)?
I’m happy to help you with these questions!

A Matter of Sovereignty
As entrepreneurs, but also as private individuals, we are called upon today to retain our freedoms and our sovereignty. Globalisation and worldwide connectivity do not necessarily mean that we must lose control over our data or become reliant on individual actors.