Design resilient applications to reduce cloud concentration risk

Concentration risk is increasing in the cloud market, driven by a low number of cloud providers supporting a high number of organizations. The level of risk depends on how the sector’s applications are distributed across cloud providers and the resilience of the application architectures. This report shows how rising market concentration and poor visibility drive risk exposure, and explains why organizations should prioritize resilient single-cloud architectures before they consider dual-cloud implementations.

KEY POINTS

• Globally, cloud concentration is increasing as hyperscale providers take market share from smaller providers.
• Accurate measurement of risk exposure requires breakdowns of sector concentration and sector application resiliency, which are unlikely to be made public by providers and their customers. Globally, cloud concentration is increasing as hyperscale providers take market share from smaller providers.
• Poor application resiliency exacerbates the market concentration risk created by a limited number of cloud providers.
• A first step toward reducing concentration risk is for organizations to take advantage of cloud zones and regions and to make suitable disaster recovery plans. Multi-cloud is not necessarily an effective solution.