Cloud News Roundup: UK Follows FTC’s Lead in Investigating AWS and Azure
Plus, changes at Google Cloud, nClouds, Cloudnexa, Vultr, and research on AI’s impact on orgs, partners.
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Ofcom, Britain’s media regulator, this week asked the Competition and Markets Authority to conduct an antitrust investigation into Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure.
And the CMA agreed to do just that.
“This is a £7.5 billion market that underpins a whole host of online services – from social media to AI foundation models,” said Sarah Cardell, CEO of the CMA, in a press release. “Many businesses now completely rely on cloud services, making effective competition in this market essential.”
Ofcom says the world’s two largest public cloud service providers have made it harder for businesses in the UK to use more than one cloud supplier. That’s according to an exclusive report by Reuters, news that has since gone a bit viral.
In an Oct. 5 statement, Ofcom said it is most concerned about the following aspects of AWS’ and Azure’s practices:
• Egress fees, for moving data out of the cloud
• Discounts, which could encourage customers to only use one provider
• Technical barriers to switching vendors
What’s notable about the move is that Ofcom and the CMA join the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, France, Japan, The Netherlands and South Korea in probes for more data from AWS and Azure. The FTC in March issued a call for public comment into whether AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, Oracle Cloud and other providers hold too much market power. And, like Ofcom, the FTC is investigating egress fees.
Meanwhile, in Britain, Ofcom said this week that AWS and Azure, combined, claimed 70-80% of the region’s public cloud infrastructure market last year. Their closest rival, Google, came in at 5-10%, as Reuters noted.
Amazon told Reuters it disagrees with Ofcom, saying that “any unwarranted intervention could lead to unintended harm to IT customers and competition.”
However, the company, along with Microsoft, said it will work “constructively” with the UK’s antitrust authorities.
Google Cloud has made some changes to its private offers marketplace, where partners negotiate private deals with customers.
The company says the process now flows more smoothly, including delivering updates as a sale progresses. There are other cosmetic and workflow tweaks as well.
But perhaps the most impactful adjustments come in the form of some new features. Here’s an overview:
1. Five years billed annually: Google Cloud now offers five-year contracts with the ability to choose annual or less frequent billing cycles. The vendor says this supports better financial planning and management.
2. Commitment rollover and free credits: Unused commitments may roll over between installments or expire at the end of each installment. Partners also can provide bonus credits to customers at no charge.
3. Metric discounts: During the offer creation process, partners may set discounts to individual metrics of their product.
4. Scheduled purchases: Partners now may schedule offers to start on a future date.
5. Key events widget: With this feature, stakeholders see changes and actions — such as editing, amending, approving, canceling, archiving or publishing a URL for a private offer — performed by different people.
6. PDF downloads: Partners may now download complete copies of private offers and share the details as needed.
7. Notifications: Look for a new purchase lifecycle notification system. Customers now receive emails for events such as purchase confirmation or enabling or disabling auto-renewal. Google Cloud will also send alerts at staged intervals before a subscription ends or an order is renewed.
Planning for the latest cloud computing trends? Forrester Research has your back.
The analyst firm has unveiled its predictions for the cloud sector, with findings that include a lot of emphasis on (surprise!) artificial intelligence, multicloud complexity and digital sovereignty.
Each of these issues is challenging organizations in 2023, and will continue to do so next year, the firm said.
While some of Forrester’s predictions feel a little basic, others intrigue. One example: WebAssembly, which analysts call “the future.” WebAssembly, more for the developer audience than anyone, is a new type of code that runs in modern web browsers. This is important because supports high-speed web apps.
Another interesting prediction concerns managed service providers. Forrester says these partners will shift their focus to advisory-led business models. That trend is already happening — see the emergence of Ollion as one example.
Organizations are reporting that the demands of new AI systems are exceeding their current network capacity.
That’s according to a new study from Accenture.
A majority (87%) of respondents told the global consultancy that AI demands are outpacing infrastructure.
Cloud providers are having the same struggle. There’s now talk from Microsoft, as just one example, of turning to nuclear power to surmount AI’s energy drains.
While end users don’t really have that option, they could lean more toward cloud providers that do rely on nuclear power.
“The network cannot continue to be a choke point,” said Andy Tay, global lead of Accenture Cloud First. “Something needs to change when C-suite executives now tell us that inadequate network services are affecting key areas, such as business efficiency and customer experience.”
How the switch to nuclear power might develop remains a wait-and-see situation. And yet, Microsoft channel partners, especially, will want to keep an eye on this potential sea change. A recent Canalys study found that Microsoft’s more than 400,000 partners “are being placed at the center of its AI go-to-market strategy, regardless of their type and size, whether they are ISVs, services partners or device partners.”
To that point, Microsoft’s fiscal year 2024 growth strategy is counting on more sales through its cloud marketplace, and better collaboration and co-sell activities among partners, ISVs and Microsoft, Canalys said.
“AI will play expansive roles in supporting Microsoft’s channel go-to-market strategy, helping to start customer conversations and helping ISVs create apps faster,” the firm, an Informa company, noted in early October.
There’s more cloud managed service provider M&A to discuss. On the heels of the Ollion announcement, nClouds, an AWS premier tier services partner, this week said it’s buying fellow AWS premier tier services partner Cloudnexa.
Together, the companies will create one of the largest pure-play AWS partners in North America, they said. They’ll focus on cloud operations and getting customers’ cloud infrastructure up to speed to handle generative AI, compliance and security.
Cloudnexa specializes in the security, compliance and DevOps departments. nClouds holds particular expertise in cloud and data migrations, application modernization, managed services and DevOps.
They’ll target customers in a range of industries, including oil and gas, healthcare, government, manufacturing, high-tech and the public sector.
The companies did not reveal the transaction’s terms, nor who will lead the combined company.
Another independent cloud provider is taking aim at Latin America, a region fairly underserved by the hyperscalers.
This week, Vultr announced that it has launched its Mexico City data center.
The company sees big opportunity in Latin America, where venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz has found that companies last year spent $19 billion on public cloud services. That amount represented 12% of their total IT expenditures, Andreesen Horowitz said, a chunk that surpasses all regions except North America.
Vultr continues to expand its global footprint. It now has 32 cloud data centers in regions including Santiago, Chile, and São Paulo, Brazil. The vendor aims to capitalize on the lack of hyperscaler opportunity in the regions amid growing business demand for cloud computing. Vultr cites venture capital investment in Latin America that reached $7.8 billion in 2022, marking an 85% increase from 2021 as one reason for its strategy.
“The need for flexible cloud services is more evident than ever,” the company wrote in an Oct. 4 blog. “As startups discover the advantages of independent cloud providers, the region’s tech visionaries will have the resources needed to turn possibilities into realities.”
Another independent cloud provider is taking aim at Latin America, a region fairly underserved by the hyperscalers.
This week, Vultr announced that it has launched its Mexico City data center.
The company sees big opportunity in Latin America, where venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz has found that companies last year spent $19 billion on public cloud services. That amount represented 12% of their total IT expenditures, Andreesen Horowitz said, a chunk that surpasses all regions except North America.
Vultr continues to expand its global footprint. It now has 32 cloud data centers in regions including Santiago, Chile, and São Paulo, Brazil. The vendor aims to capitalize on the lack of hyperscaler opportunity in the regions amid growing business demand for cloud computing. Vultr cites venture capital investment in Latin America that reached $7.8 billion in 2022, marking an 85% increase from 2021 as one reason for its strategy.
“The need for flexible cloud services is more evident than ever,” the company wrote in an Oct. 4 blog. “As startups discover the advantages of independent cloud providers, the region’s tech visionaries will have the resources needed to turn possibilities into realities.”
This week marked the start of the year’s final quarter. With all the activity around closing July-September, you might have missed some key cloud computing tidbits — like the UK’s antitrust authority agreeing to investigate AWS and Azure.
The process started with Ofcom, Britain’s media regulator. That body asked the Competition and Markets Authority (you know, the one that finally gave its approval to the pending Broadcom-VMware deal) to explore whether AWS and Azure have too much sway over England’s businesses.
In the first slide in this week’s cloud computing news roundup, we look at the developments concerning AWS and Azure across the pond.
But there’s a bit more to click through, too. We’re picking up tidbits you might have glanced over during the frenzy of third-quarter closeout. Here’s a little preview:
Google Cloud made some partner-centered changes to the private offers process in its marketplace
Forrester Research issued its assessment of cloud computing trends, putting managed service providers front and center
And Vultr continues to roll out data centers in Latin America, where it intends to fill the gap left by hyperscalers.
Let’s start with why the UK is investigating AWS and Azure. Click the image above to get started.
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