According to IDC research, 4 U.S. public cloud providers have hit 40% market share within Europe in 2015. While demand for private cloud services continues to rise, privacy and security in the cloud continue to dominate our daily news, this data point is important as it reflects both European as well as broader global views about cloud security and privacy.
The 4 companies, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and IBM, have increased their European market share amidst NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden’s alarming claims, as well as the initiation of the GDPR, Europe’s response to security and privacy fears arising chiefly from Snowden’s claims.
What, if anything, can we deduce from this?
Are Europeans Really Concerned About Cloud Security & Privacy?
Yes. If you examine European behavior since 2008, passage of GDPR, legal actions taken against several US cloud companies (including a few mentioned above), and even the latest Brexit vote by the UK to leave the EU, all point towards a high level of concern over European data privacy and security.
So, why the increase in market share by US cloud companies who are largely providing “public” cloud solutions?
Public cloud is becoming more private…to a certain point. As companies like IBM’s SoftLayer, Amazon, and Microsoft, all develop more data centers within Europe (and the rest of the world), these more regional touch points help assuage European fears about US cloud companies having access to customer data.
This is actually a good move by the public cloud vendors. However, it does not go all the way towards true private cloud computing and transparency as there are still large unknown areas of logical access to these facilities and the data to which they have access.
Future Growth
The dominance of US cloud companies in Europe does not, however, signal a demise or lessening of global concern over data privacy and security. Instead, it could likely be the foundation of cloud within Europe with more private cloud infrastructure and resources coming shortly.
Companies all around the world (not just Europe) are eager to strike a balance between public cloud data and private cloud data. Not all information is suitable for public cloud. This is why the future will be in a) identifying this categorized data, and b) identifying different cloud environments to house the data.
In the short term, it is good to see cloud growth in Europe.