European cloud infrastructure corporations make up simply 15 p.c of their very own market, and the massive funding the US giants can wield makes their dominance “an unattainable hill to climb” for any would-be challengers.
Particulars shared by Synergy Analysis on regional markets present that Euro cloud operators proceed to develop, however none comes remotely near competing with the massive American rivals for management of European markets.
Based on Synergy, native corporations accounted for almost a 3rd (29 p.c) of cloud infrastructure revenues in 2017, however by 2022 their share had dropped to only 15 p.c and has held pretty regular ever since.
European operators greater than tripled their revenues between 2017 and 2024, but the regional market as an entire has grown by an element of six to succeed in €61 billion ($70 billion) in worth, that means the native gamers had been merely outgrown by Amazon, Microsoft, and Google.
These three world suppliers now account for 70 p.c of the European market between them, whereas the biggest regional corporations similar to SAP and Deutsche Telekom account for only a 2 p.c share every.
This represents a sobering actuality test amid requires Europe to scale back its reliance on American-owned know-how infrastructure, a name that gained momentum following the inauguration of President Trump and his administration’s confrontational stance towards others, notably the EU.
As The Register reported earlier this year, information privateness worries have taken on new urgency following strikes by Washington similar to eradicating members of the US Privateness and Civil Liberties Oversight Board that safeguards information underneath the EU-US Knowledge Privateness Framework, plus alleged flouting of federal information guidelines to advance coverage objectives.
And it might probably’t have helped {that a} Microsoft govt recently conceded throughout a French Senate inquiry that Microsoft “can’t assure” buyer information sovereignty if the US authorities calls for entry, regardless of its many assurances on the contrary.
A gaggle of almost 100 know-how corporations and different organizations lobbied the European Commission in March for the creation of a sovereign infrastructure fund to spend money on key know-how in order to reduce dependence on US companies.
French cloud biz OVHcloud additionally claimed – briefly – that it was working with the Fee to analyze shifting workloads to its platform from Microsoft’s Azure.
Nevertheless analysts and different consultants instructed us in Might that decoupling from the big US cloud players can be tough and is basically an unrealistic ambition.
“In principle, there’s nothing stopping European corporations from repatriating their information and purposes to European clouds, and even bringing every part again on-premise,” stated Steve Brazier, former CEO at Canalys and now a Fellow at Informa.
“However in apply, it is near unattainable. The limitations are important, they usually stack up shortly,” he added.
Synergy Analysis Chief Analyst John Dinsdale echoed this sentiment, noting that the sheer scale of the American operators and their monetary clout has made it tough for others to compete towards them.
“As US cloud suppliers proceed to take a position some €10 billion ($11.7 billion) each quarter in European capex applications, that presents an unattainable hill to climb for any corporations who want to significantly problem their market management,” Dinsdale stated.
“The cloud market is a sport of scale the place aspiring leaders have to position enormous monetary bets, will need to have a long-term view of investments and profitability, should keep a targeted willpower to succeed, and should constantly obtain operational excellence.
“No European corporations have come near that set of standards and the result’s a market the place the 5 leaders are all US corporations,” he added.
European cloud suppliers have largely settled into positions of serving native teams of consumers which have particular native necessities, generally working as companions to the massive US cloud suppliers, in accordance with Dinsdale.
“Whereas many European cloud suppliers will proceed to develop, they’re unlikely to maneuver the needle a lot when it comes to total European market share,” he predicts.
European cloud infrastructure service revenues (together with IaaS, PaaS, and hosted personal cloud providers) had been estimated by Synergy to be €36 billion ($42 billion) within the first half of 2025, with revenues for the total 12 months anticipated to be up by 24 p.c year-on-year.
The most important cloud markets in Europe are the UK and Germany, however the highest development charges are at the moment seen in Eire, Spain, and Italy.
Public cloud Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) account for the majority of the European market and proceed to develop extra quickly than hosted personal cloud providers, Synergy says.
Nevertheless, AI is more and more driving the market, with development of 140-160 p.c seen in GenAI-specific providers similar to GPUaaS and GenAI PaaS, the analyst claimed. ®
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