As Western sanctions rain down on Russia, cloud computing services are following the trend. The three biggest names in the sector in the world, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft and Google, have thus announced that their offer is no longer available in Vladimir Putin’s country.
The three biggest names in cloud computing with one voice
On March 4, the world’s No. 1 and No. 2 in cloud computing each declared that they were ending their activities in Russia. Amazon Web Services, Amazon’s cloud service, has thus declared the impossibility of registering for its service from Russia as well as from Belarus. The e-commerce giant has also assured that none of its products will be delivered there.
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” We are announcing today that we will be suspending all new sales of Microsoft products and services in Russia “, for its part announced the Redmond firm the same day. Obviously, this includes Microsoft Azure, the company’s cloud computing offering. Same story at Google: “ We can confirm that we are not accepting new Google Cloud customers in Russia at this time. We will continue to monitor developments closely. “.
Companies withdraw from Russia one by one
These various announcements from American technology giants are not surprising. Many companies from Silicon Valley such as, for example, Adobe, AMD, Airbnb, IBM, Intel or even Oracle, have put their links with Russia in suspense.
In addition to its cloud service, Google has also halted its advertising activities in the country, putting the revenue of many media at risk. Apple was in the same direction by simply ceasing to sell its products in Russia. In addition, two American Internet providers, Lumen and Cogent, have also announced the suspension of their network in the eastern country. The world of video games has also stepped up.
However, cloud computing is a rapidly expanding and growing sector. Image: Pixabay
The tech sector is obviously not the only one to want to sanction the country. Various companies such as Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, PepsiCo, Exxon or Visa have made similar decisions. It is nevertheless difficult to know whether these will really influence Vladimir Putin in his choices, instead of simply penalizing the Russian people.
Some experts fear that these decisions made by the big tech players in particular will further cut off Russians from the rest of the world, leaving them prey to state propaganda without access to other means of informing themselves.
Can Chinese cloud services benefit?
As for cloud services, their decision to suspend their activity in Russia should not impact them too much financially, since Russia and Ukraine have very little participation in their sector of activity, reports TechCrunch. It is also possible to envisage that Chinese cloud computing companies could take the place of their American counterparts, like Alibaba or Huawei, the two largest cloud providers in the Middle Kingdom. However, this last option is not certain, as the position of Chinese companies is so delicate: they have more to lose than to gain by refusing to go along with Western sanctions against Russia.
As a reminder, cloud computing is one of the sectors experiencing the strongest growth since the start of the pandemic in 2020. Within 3 years, the cloud budget of companies should reach 1,800 billion dollars against 1,300 billion in 2022. , according to a recent study by Gartner.