The data should reside exactly where they’re needed and nowhere else. For the UK NHS that’s probably in a UK data centre run by a UK company. Not AWS.
The fundamental problem with SaaS and pure server side applications is we do not know where the data are. With local first we can verify data locality.
Unfortunately the American companies are using their monopolies to price out everyone else. You're now in a situation where it's harder and harder to find people in the UK that can operate data centre services at the speed and quality of the cloud providers. The UK/EU needs it's own GCP/AWS/Azure alternatives. Unfortunately there's not really anyone close.
Sounds like you've already captiulated to big tech.
Governements could and absolutely should be subsidisng home-grown data centres. And taxing the hell out of every square metre of AWS and Google data centres. Why not have a data tax for foreign companies?
The fundamental problem with SaaS and pure server side applications is we do not know where the data are. With local first we can verify data locality.