In the cloud, Amazon, Microsoft and Google now hold 71% market share in France, according to a study conducted by the firm Markess by Exaegis. “Rarely has a digital market been so concentrated”note its authors.
The gap continues to widen in France between the American cloud giants and European specialists in the sector. This is what emerges from the latest study conducted by the firm Markess by Exaegis. Indeed, the three American giants Amazon, Microsoft and Google have managed to gobble up 80% of the growth in spending on the French market in 2021, which represents a nice cake of nearly 400 million euros to be shared between three. With infrastructure cloud growth in France estimated at 37% per year, the volume of activity should reach 27 billion euros in 2025 on the French market.
Leaving only crumbs to the competition in terms of new contracts to build infrastructure and develop applications in the cloud, the three giants across the Atlantic now hold 71% market share in this key technological sector, which has boosted during the Covid-19 pandemic with the sudden rise of remote working. Indeed, to accelerate their digital transformation, many French companies have turned to cloud solutions to ensure the sustainability of their activities. A trend observed worldwide.
First place for Amazon, strongest growth for Microsoft
But this surge in spending in the cloud has therefore mainly benefited American groups, to the detriment of European players in the sector, who have constantly denounced a market where the dice are loaded because of the anti-competitive practices of companies from overseas. -Atlantic. “Rarely has a digital market been so concentrated”, note the authors of the study. And this concentration is above all Amazon Web Services (AWS), the cloud branch of the American e-commerce giant, which benefits from it. Today, AWS is largely the leader in France, with 46% market share, far ahead of Microsoft Azure (17%) and Google Cloud (8%).
However, with Amazon holding almost half of the market, it is becoming more difficult for the Seattle group to maintain insane growth. If it was far from ridiculous in 2021 (+36%), in terms of average market growth (+35%), it is lower than that of Google Cloud (+48%) and especially Microsoft Azure, which recorded the strongest growth last year (+53%).
Microsoft calms the game in Brussels, Google opens its datacenters in France
If the Redmond firm can count on its Office 365 office software suite to attract companies and thus encourage them to turn to its cloud platform, it is the subject of a complaint for abuse of dominant position filed by OVHcloud and other undertakings with the European Union competition authority. In the spotlight: more expensive and restrictive licenses for Office 365 granted to hosts who do not offer Microsoft cloud services.
This complaint could lead to an official investigation by the European Commission, Microsoft decided to react by announcing concessions for its software and hosting services. The company led by Brad Smith will notably revise its cloud licenses so that its customers can use their solutions with the European cloud provider of their choice. The American group also ensures that it will make it easier for European cloud providers to host most Microsoft services on their own infrastructure.
While Brad Smith makes the trip to Brussels to try to appease the European Commission by arguing that his company has no “not paying enough attention to the smallest players in the sector”, Google Cloud wants to accelerate its development in France. In this context, the Mountain View firm will officially set up in France in June. This deployment on the French market will result in the commissioning of three data centers in Île-de-France initially.
European players are targeting niche markets to exist
If Google continues its rise in power in France, the other players, especially Europeans, must fight to control the remaining 29% of the market. Last year, OVHcloud, Scaleway, 3D Outscale and others only recorded growth of 23% in France. Faced with American solutions that target both VSMEs and SMEs as well as large groups in all sectors of activity, they are trying to find a place for themselves “on specific segments: cybersecurity, application platforms, sovereign cloud, hybrid and multicloud cloud management”notes the study by Markess by Exaegis.
As they struggle to try to exist in the face of the omnipotence of the three giants across the Atlantic, these players also see major companies choosing American solutions. This is particularly the case of Orange and Capgemini, which created Bleu in 2021 to offer Microsoft cloud solutions, or Thales, which has joined forces with Google to launch a “cloud of trust”. An offer of trust perhaps, but far from being sovereign…