Go large or go dwelling: Ought to UK IT consumers favour US clouds or homegrown suppliers?
Governments throughout the continent are more and more championing the usage of native, homegrown suppliers and tightening the foundations on the place the information of their residents may be hosted, as a present of their dedication to information sovereignty.
An oft-cited purpose for that is geopolitical considerations, which have turn into extra urgent within the wake of US president Donald Trump beginning his second stint within the White Home again in January 2025.
As beforehand documented by Laptop Weekly, Trump’s roll-out of tech-adjacent tariffs on world exports has prompted requires Europe to take steps to allow a “strengthening of the home economic system” to make sure the president’s actions trigger minimal disruption to IT provide chains.
There are additionally the knotty claims pertaining to Microsoft reportedly slicing e mail entry for the Worldwide Felony Courtroom’s (ICC) chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, in response to a February 2025 US government order referring to a authorities investigation into Israeli politicians.
Microsoft president Brad Smith not too long ago pushed again on these allegations, claiming the corporate didn’t “cease or droop” its providers to the ICC. Both method, the state of affairs has heightened considerations that Trump’s actions may consequence within the plug being pulled on US-based cloud providers that giant swathes of European customers depend on.
These occasions have additionally served to focus on the divide between the remainder of Europe and the UK’s perspective to cloud-related information sovereignty points.
With many European firms seemingly pulling again from utilizing abroad clouds, the UK’s reliance on them continues to develop, backed by authorities steering – launched initially of 2025 – providing help to public sector organisations that wish to host extra of their workloads and functions in abroad clouds.
In a nutshell, the steering permits UK public sector organisations to make use of cloud providers hosted outdoors the UK for “resilience, capability and entry to innovation causes”, and additional states that “non-UK providers may be less expensive and sustainable” than homegrown ones.
The supply of the steering – the Division for Science, Innovation and Know-how (DSIT) – has confronted criticism because it was printed in early February 2025, with business watchers telling Laptop Weekly its contents are “discouraging public sector our bodies” from shopping for from British tech companies, at a time when most of Europe is championing homegrown suppliers.
A distinct strategy in Europe
In contrast, lower than two weeks after the DSIT steering emerged, the Cloud Infrastructure Providers Suppliers in Europe (CISPE) commerce physique introduced a shake-up of its governance construction, with larger emphasis on championing the pursuits of the continent’s homegrown cloud providers suppliers.
The organisation introduced an replace to its articles of affiliation on 13 February 2025 that states solely European cloud suppliers are permitted to carry board positions at CISPE.
The rule change resulted in US cloud big Amazon Net Providers (AWS) stepping down as a board member, which means it not has any sway over the organisation’s governance or route, as a result of solely board members have the fitting to vote on such issues at CISPE.
By the way, fellow public cloud big Microsoft additionally joined CISPE earlier this yr, as a non-voting member, having beforehand discovered itself at odds with the organisation over its technique of charging enterprises extra for operating its software program in competing cloud environments.
CISPE additionally launched a brand new governance framework, dubbed the Sovereignty and Strategic Autonomy Committee, concurrently saying the change to its board construction.
In keeping with CISPE, the committee’s creation is in response to the “rising demand from European cloud customers, authorities businesses and personal sector prospects for aggressive, homegrown cloud infrastructure and AI options”.
Talking to Laptop Weekly, Jake Madders, director at Brighton-based cloud firm Hyve Managed Internet hosting, says the UK authorities appears intent on pushing folks in direction of utilizing the US-based hyperscalers, which is at full odds with what different European international locations are doing.
“The exact opposite is occurring in Europe, the place they’re prioritising homegrown companies and native corporations, and – from our perspective – it appears loopy that the UK just isn’t taking care of its personal,” he says.
UK pursuits lie in abroad clouds
The DSIT steering comes sizzling on the heels of almost a decade of rising public sector adoption of US-based cloud providers from AWS and Microsoft, predominantly, since each corporations opened their first UK datacentre areas in 2016. Google Cloud, by the way, opened its first UK datacentre in the summertime of 2017.
Shortly after these areas went reside, the UK authorities rolled out a public cloud-championing revision to its 2013 mandate for all central authorities departments to take a cloud-first strategy to new expertise purchases.
Within the wake of this, the pool of UK-based cloud infrastructure suppliers that may provide real sovereign cloud providers has all however dried up, as personal and public sector organisations proceed to extend their IT spend with US-based cloud corporations.
Proof of this may be seen in figures launched in late June 2025 by public sector IT market watcher Tussell in its Tech Titans report.
The doc particulars the UK public sector’s prime 150 highest-earning expertise suppliers, revealing that round 1 / 4 of those firms are primarily based within the US – though the bulk are from the UK. Nonetheless, the quantity of public sector IT spend the UK-based “tech titans” are accruing is on a downward trajectory.
“Whereas homegrown corporations make up over half of the tech titans by quantity, their share of public sector tech income is shrinking – down from 45% 4 years in the past to 42% right now,” the report states.
And it’s, as detailed within the report, a trigger for concern. “Amid rising geopolitical tensions and renewed calls to ‘purchase British’, the UK’s personal tech champions are dropping floor. This pattern raises important questions on resilience, home functionality, and the longer term form of public sector provide chains,” it says.
Rising considerations about abroad clouds
Dave Michels, a researcher specialising in cloud computing regulation at Queen Mary College London (QMUL), shared comparable findings throughout a keynote at Discussion board Europe’s third annual European Sovereign Cloud Day occasion in June 2025.
“Inside the world cloud infrastructure market, the highest three suppliers – AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud – collectively maintain some 63% of the market … [and when we] go down the listing of the highest eight suppliers, we see that these are all both US or Chinese language firms. There isn’t a single European cloud supplier within the prime eight,” says Michels.
“And that’s largely true of the European cloud markets too, [because] if we take a look at the highest six leaders within the provision of cloud providers in Europe, we’ll see the highest three areas are virtually at all times occupied by Amazon [and] Microsoft,” he provides.
The exception to that is the French cloud market, the place native, homegrown supplier OVHCloud occupies the third-place place.
“If we take a look at information from the beginning of 2017 to about mid-2022, we are able to see that the general [cloud] market has grown from round €2bn to €10bn, however – on the identical time – the European supplier’s share of the market has decreased from over 25% to simply below 15%,” he continues.
“In different phrases, what we’re seeing is widespread reliance on international and notably US service suppliers … and this has led to considerations each on behalf of particular person prospects and European policymakers.”
A few of these buyer considerations embrace the chance that their chosen US-based cloud supplier would possibly hand over their information to the US authorities with out informing them for regulation enforcement or international intelligence-gathering causes below the phrases of the Communications Act and FISA Part 72, respectively, says Michels.
“US safety orders can goal information saved in Europe,” he provides. “So merely having information saved at datacentres inside Europe doesn’t defend information from US authorities entry if the cloud supplier is topic to US jurisdiction,” he warns.
AWS, by the way, not too long ago printed a weblog publish clarifying its stance on responding to US authorities calls for for entry to buyer information saved outdoors its dwelling nation, citing an “improve in inquiries” about this subject.
“There have been no information requests to AWS that resulted in disclosure to the US authorities of enterprise or authorities content material information saved outdoors the US since we began reporting the statistic in 2020,” the AWS weblog reads.
“Moreover, US regulation itself offers quite a few statutory protections that assist decrease the chance that AWS might be required to reveal enterprise or authorities content material information, and the US Division of Justice (DoJ) has carried out further operational protections over the previous eight years.”
Shutting down entry
One other concern cited by prospects, continues Michels, is whether or not the issuing of a US authorities order may end in them being shut off from utilizing the providers of their chosen cloud supplier, as allegedly occurred in the course of the aforementioned ICC case.
“With the US, we have now a long-standing Nato partnership [and] they’re our allies, [so] it’s a really low chance that they might lower [the UK] off from the US cloud … [but] what I’ll say for sure is that it will be very excessive impression,” he continues.
“It might be extraordinarily disruptive if US cloud service suppliers stopped serving European prospects within the public sector or within the important infrastructure sectors. That might have a big impact on European society.”
Throughout a Q&A on the identical occasion, Michels was requested by an viewers member what recommendation he would give to enterprises and IT consumers who’re involved about changing into too reliant on the applied sciences of abroad cloud suppliers.
The reply to that, says Michels, is dependent upon the business the enterprise in query operates in, and the sensitivity of their information, which can dictate the kind of IT setting they need to be trying to construct or undertake.
“Should you’re speaking in regards to the defence sector or European intelligence businesses, then perhaps there’s a good argument for preserving a number of that [data] on-premise … [and] in-house, [and] decreasing reliance on exterior suppliers,” says Michels.
“You can [in that scenario also] have an air-gapped model of a cloud operating regionally by yourself, on-premise infrastructure.”
For much less delicate information that also wants some further safety wrapped round it, Michels says there are European suppliers on the market which have partnered with the US hyperscalers to offer prospects with sovereign cloud choices that may “cut back the chance of US authorities entry” to their information.
That is an strategy the staff at Google Cloud has adopted, having solid partnerships with native cloud suppliers in Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Belgium and Luxembourg.
Microsoft has additionally introduced strategic partnerships with Capgemini and Orange in France, and SAP and Arvato Programs in Germany, to offer customers with entry to cloud providers which are below the respective management of each international locations.
As beforehand reported by Laptop Weekly, Microsoft has additionally entered right into a preferential pricing take care of CISPE that can see it cost the commerce physique’s members much less to host variations of its cloud software program on their techniques than it does AWS and Google for a similar luxurious.
“[That’s] acceptable for some use instances and can assist drive demand for European providers as nicely,” he says.
For low-risk information, although, customers shouldn’t low cost utilizing a US-based hyperscale cloud, he provides.
“You is likely to be storing non-personal information within the cloud about [the] inventory [levels] of shopper items that you simply’re promoting, otherwise you is likely to be testing a brand new utility with dummy information,” he says.
“The present hyperscale options are completely high-quality [for those use cases], and so it’s all about determining the place on that spectrum you end up as a buyer and selecting the suitable resolution for you.”
