Hyperscalers Shake Up the Market with Bold Moves

Major hyperscalers like Microsoft, AWS, and Google Cloud are entering the sovereign cloud market, challenging smaller providers that built their businesses around data privacy and regulatory compliance.

Microsoft's new European offerings promise local control and data sovereignty but raise concerns due to U.S. legal obligations like the CLOUD Act, which may undermine true independence.

While these moves expand choices for organizations, they also add legal complexity and skepticism, especially in regulated sectors. As trust in U.S. tech firms erodes, some European governments are exploring local, open-source alternatives, intensifying the debate over what “sovereign cloud” truly means.

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Amazon Bedrock is under growing pressure to evolve beyond a model hub into a full-fledged orchestration platform, as enterprise customers demand deeper tooling, native agent support, and reduced integration complexity.

Lacking OpenAI model access, robust agent frameworks, and unified workflows, Bedrock now trails competitors like Azure and Google Cloud in usability and developer experience. While AWS recently introduced Strands Agents, its lack of integration with Bedrock has drawn criticism.

Analysts suggest AWS may be preparing a major Bedrock revamp, aimed at improving agent orchestration, pricing flexibility, and developer tooling—responding to enterprise demand for a more cohesive, cloud-native generative AI platform.

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AI adoption is accelerating the expansion of tech roles in the C-suite, with half of organizations now reporting at least four C-level technology officers, according to Deloitte. As CIOs focus on AI and data analytics, the demand for generative AI skills has become critical—especially for chief data and analytics officers.

However, overlapping responsibilities and differing strategic priorities are creating coordination challenges. Experts suggest the next step is orchestration: aligning tech leadership to integrate business strategy, talent, and innovation, while navigating tensions between innovation and responsible AI use.

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The UK Government Digital Service (GDS) is developing a cloud cost data solution to improve public sector spending on digital services. With over £1 billion spent annually on cloud services, the initiative aims to provide a centralized, near real-time view of cloud usage and costs across government organizations.

By adopting the FinOps Foundation’s FOCUS standard, the solution enables integration across multiple cloud providers without complex data transformation processes. During the pilot phase, four organizations were onboarded, and an interactive dashboard was launched to visualize spending patterns.

Future plans include expanding to more providers and incorporating SaaS cost data, such as Microsoft 365 licensing. This project is key to enabling smarter procurement, increasing transparency, and ensuring that taxpayer money is spent efficiently on essential digital infrastructure.

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We talk with Ido Kotler (CPO of Pelanor) about how artificial intelligence is radically transforming financial operations in the Cloud. From smart alerts to autonomous agents, discover why the future of FinOps depends on AI more than you might think.

Open-source software (OSS) is now foundational in mission-critical IT systems across nearly all enterprises, offering benefits such as innovation, flexibility, and cost savings. However, “OSS must be strategically managed to avoid risks and unlock full business value,” according to Gartner analysts Mark Driver and Nitish Tyagi.

CTOs are encouraged to treat open source as a long-term investment, not just a free alternative, by establishing strong governance frameworks—ideally via an Open Source Program Office (OSPO). The report also highlights that poorly managed OSS introduces legal, technical, and security risks, especially when lacking proper oversight.

Success with OSS requires clear policies on usage, contributions, and security, along with cross-functional alignment and continuous performance tracking. Ultimately, the message is clear: OSS is not just a development model—it’s a strategic asset that demands disciplined governance and enterprise-wide coordination.

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Cloud-native environments offer agility, scalability, and innovation, but fully realizing their strategic value requires more than workload migration. Members of the Forbes Technology Council emphasize aligning cloud initiatives with business goals, breaking down operational silos, and embracing automation, AI, and platform engineering.

Key advice includes: making automation central to strategy, adopting unified platforms for security, observability, and multicloud management, and using FinOps to connect cloud spend with business impact. Other critical tactics include enabling hybrid storage, minimizing SRE overhead, leveraging AI for auto-scaling and anomaly detection, and resisting overcustomization.

To extract long-term value, enterprises must invest in governance, visibility, and adaptability across their cloud-native stacks.

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Sr Innovation Architect, AWS Specialist, speaker, author of Simple AWS, AI Software Architect.

I'm a Clown Architect, Startup Confounder, LinkedInfluencer (meaning I influence linked lists), Board Advisor to many wooden boards and planks, and builder of many things that don't work (and a few that do). I seriously believe in never being too serious, especially when doing your most serious work. Unless you're Harry Potter's uncle, then you're allowed to be Sirius.

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