Public sector urged to adopt multicloud to curtail cloud market monopoly

New study establishes six-step strategy for governments to prevent monopolisation of cloud market

The public sector should embrace multicloud to preserve competition in the cloud computing market, according to a new report.

The report, jointly penned by the Internet Economy (IE.F) think-tank and business consultancy Roland Berger, warns that a small number of dominant cloud players is emerging and the state has the responsibility and capacity to prevent cloud monopolisation.

“The public sector, both as a buyer and as a rule-setter, plays a key role in ensuring fair competition,” reads the report.

“As the primary buyer of cloud services, the state must ensure that public administration is able to build a balanced cloud portfolio within a multi-faceted cloud.”

The report acknowledges that embracing a multicloud strategy brings more complexity to public sector IT, but says adopting the approach has the benefit of preventing vendor lock-in.

The report recommends six steps to ensure innovation and diversity in cloud computing.

Alongside embracing multicloud, governments should deploy cloud in line with strategic objectives, and make service interoperability and portability a contractual obligation, the report says.

In their capacity as regulators, the report says governments should drive the development of European security standards for cloud computing, support cloud service provider self-regulation, and only pursue the regulation of cloud interoperability as a last resort.

According to market research firm Canalys, AWS holds a 32 percent share of the worldwide cloud market, more than double that of Microsoft Azure which sits in second.

“We see the danger of a monopolization, as we have already experienced in mobile operating systems or search engines,” said Friedbert Pflüger, Chairman of the IE.F.

“But policymakers still have time to act, because the market power of individual providers is not yet as concentrated as in other markets.”