IOT
“ [ PUBLIC CLOUD ] ADOPTION IN EASTERN AND SOUTHERN EUROPE WILL BECOME FASTER AS BEST PRACTICE CASES FROM WESTERN EUROPE ARE REPLICATED ”
DIVYA WAKANKAR VP ENTERPRISE MARKET , BICS
North American hyperscalers , who have seen their reputations tarnished in the court of public affairs for largely non public cloudrelated issues .
“ Take Paris , for example . It ' s been one of the fastest growing markets in Europe for the last couple of years , but there is definitely a lot of negative public sentiment there towards North American hyperscalers ,” says Pullen . “ Look at Ireland . The whole economy has been driven by the tech era , yet there ' s a huge amount of negative public sentiment towards data centres . Now , I think the problem is that the industry is finally on the radar .”
Whether a problem of misinformation , lack of effective education of the industry ’ s real sustainability impact ( which Pullen stresses is misunderstood and blown out of proportion by the public ), or genuine cause of concern , from some angles it looks like the North American public cloud sector may struggle to maintain - let alone grow - its beachhead in Europe .
Despite the fact “ It ' s definitely an optical issue ,” Pullen doesn ’ t see North American hyperscalers losing out on the European market any time soon . Quite the reverse . “ We ' re not seeing any fall-off in growth ,” he says . “ In Europe this year we ' re probably going to see more of the same in the sense that demand , especially from the hyperscalers , is driving market growth , as it has for the last few years . We ' re not seeing any abatement of that growth any time soon .”
Divya Wakankar , VP Enterprise Market at Belgian telecom firm BICS , agrees , citing increasing data privacy regulation as a key driver of public cloud adoption in Europe . “ In the coming years , we expect to see additional legislation implemented . Companies that decide to combat this by holding only private cloud systems will feel the financial burden of trying to replicate systems that are readily available on public clouds ,” she explains . “ Hyperscalers have previously been limited by their marketing budgets in certain regions , creating barriers when it comes to education and promotion . We expect to see this change in the coming years and predict adoption in Eastern and Southern Europe will become faster as best practice cases from Western Europe are replicated .”
It ’ s a matter of when , rather than “ if ”, Europe ’ s digital future will step farther into the public cloud . But whose cloud it will be still remains to be seen . Right now , North American hyperscalers remain ahead , but they certainly shouldn ’ t take that lead for granted . datacentremagazine . com 115