Subj : AWS and Microsoft are dominating the UK cloud market  and that co
To   : All
From : TechnologyDaily
Date : Wed May 29 2024 11:15:05

AWS and Microsoft are dominating the UK cloud market  and that could be a 
problem for both of them

Date:
Wed, 29 May 2024 10:04:19 +0000

Description:
New research from the UKs competition watchdog suggest AWS and Microsoft are 
in contest, while other cloud storage companies are flagging.

FULL STORY
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Microsoft and Amazon Web Services (AWS) have been found to be the dominant 
players in the UKs cloud storage market, according to the first raft of 
working papers released by the country's competition watchdog, the 
Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), as part of its investigation into 
cloud services. 

The reports into the UKs cloud market (via The Register ) suggest its value 
doubled between 2019 and 2022, reaching 7.5 billion ($8.9-9.5 billion). 
Though now almost certainly an outdated figure, its a cause for concern when 
AWS and Microsoft alone seem to be the biggest drivers. 

Per the report, the CMA estimates that Google, the next closest competitor, 
is at most a quarter of the size of AWS, and its growth rate meaning that it 
will be a long time before it catches up. CMA cloud investigation and its 
implications 

The report makes clear that, although AWS is currently dominating the market, 
Microsoft has a faster growing market share. The CMA has stressed that 
findings as part of their profitability assessments alone are not in 
themselves causes of competitive harm. 

As part of its latest research, the CMA also released a qualitative survey of 
customers, and has been considering whether Microsofts software licencing 
practices - perhaps related to its status as a provider of perhaps the most 
popular office software in the world - affects customer perceptions when 
choosing a cloud provider. 

The CMA has so far suggested that it doesnt, though we wont really know its 
complete opinion until it releases its paper on the issue next month. Other 
issues under scrutiny include the benefits of provider enterprise agreements 
that disincentivize switching, and the effort required to disentangle [a 
companys cloud infrastructure] from the Microsoft ecosystem, a discussion 
perhaps brought on by data egress fees. 

Such fees, paid to extricate data from a cloud provider, have been quietly 
dropped in recent months by AWS and Google as well as Microsoft . However, 
the CMA isnt trusting providers as far as it can throw them, pointing out 
that both AWS and Microsoft have noted that they may make changes with 
respect to the free data transfer policies at any time. 

The watchdog expects responses from the providers involved by July this year, 
with a final decision expected as late as April 2025. More from TechRadar Pro 
Why your business should make a cloud backup 5 steps to a successful cloud 
transition AWS continues European investment with new sovereign cloud



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Link to news story:
https://www.techradar.com/pro/aws-and-microsoft-are-dominating-the-uk-cloud-ma
rket-and-that-could-be-a-problem-for-both-of-them


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