AWS can call itself the king of the public cloud worldwide, but the Belgian crown remains out of reach for now. Microsoft is lord and master of the Belgian IT landscape. Can AWS change that?

AWS pulled out all the stops at its major annual re:Invent event in Las Vegas. 50,000 people from all over the world attended the conference and for four days it rained one announcement after another. The aim of the conference was to highlight AWS’s global dominance, which the competition is only too keen to dismantle. The Synergy Research Group estimates Amazon’s total market share at 32 percent. Microsoft can still hold its own with 23 percent, Google Cloud is already well behind (10%).

However, one country is resisting. Just as Julius Caesar cut his teeth on the Belgians many centuries ago, AWS is also fighting to conquer the Belgian IT industry. Current market figures for Belgium are poor, so we rely on our own survey of ITdaily readers. Fifty-seven percent of participants responded that they purchase cloud services from Microsoft Azure, compared to seventeen percent from AWS.

These numbers do not surprise Hendrik Albrecht. If Business Development Manager At De Cronos Group, he supports Belgian companies that want to make the leap into the AWS cloud. “Belgium is historically a ‘Microsoft country’, in this respect we are rather exceptional.” Only in Denmark are the shares so clearly in favor of Microsoft.”

SaaS king Microsoft

Albrecht wants to nuance the balance of power a little. “The market figures also depend on what you mean by the term ‘cloud’. Cloud is a broad concept consisting of several layers: you have IaaS, SaaS, PaaS, etc. If we look only at the IaaS segment, for example, AWS has a 43 percent market share in Belgium, compared to 25 percent for Microsoft. ”

Microsoft is winning the battle primarily in the “top” segment of the cloud: software. “Microsoft has managed to win the market with its Office 365 offering. AWS simply doesn’t have anything like this. But there are also large SaaS platforms that run on the AWS infrastructure. Just think of Salesforce.”

Belgium is a “Microsoft country”. Microsoft has managed to conquer the market with Office 365. AWS doesn’t have anything like that.

Hendrik Albrecht, Business Development Manager, The Cronos Group

Local data centers

Although Belgium is only a small country, it must be a relief for AWS that Microsoft Azure is doing better than anywhere else in the world. The public cloud is a market segment that AWS itself invented. “AWS was the first provider to offer public cloud services in 2006, and the focus was on the cloud from the start,” says Albrecht. “Microsoft had to do the opposite step and connect on-premise services to Azure. As a result, AWS has built up a lead of several years and is still the largest provider today.”

During re:Invent, CEO Adam Selipsky was happy to share figures about the high number Availability zones that the AWS cloud counts. Ironically, AWS has just caught up with the competition in Belgium. For a long time, AWS was too harsh on our country: companies that wanted to use AWS had to store their data in London, Frankfurt or Paris. Google was quicker to recognize that a local presence was actually an important selling point and has already built (and continues to expand) several data centers in Belgium, an example that Microsoft has now followed. The history of technology teaches us that… Pioneer You may not always be the first to cross the finish line, but in the competitive cloud industry, every little edge you can get helps.

Albrecht also agrees that AWS can no longer delay setting up its own data centers in our country. “There is a race for local presence among the major cloud providers. We also notice that customers are sensitive to this. With increasingly stringent regulations surrounding data, there is greater demand from customers to keep it as local as possible.”

The first Belgian AWS data center will not be there overnight, Albrecht continues. “AWS takes a different approach to data centers and wants to completely own the infrastructure, right down to every cable laid. I’m sure other providers’ contracts are negotiated very well, but AWS chooses to be completely independent of third parties.”

Until then, AWS will try to compensate for its physical absence virtually. The provider launched a sovereign cloud service this year that is operated from Germany Dedicated local zones to ensure the data stays where the customer wants. A step in the right direction, says Albrecht. “This is the first major step by AWS to become more locally anchored. As an AWS partner, we have expressed interest in expanding this offering. But our own AWS infrastructure will also be important to serve customers who want to keep their data in Belgium.”

From development to productivity

AWS can always rely on its strengths with or without a local data center. Albrecht lists some of them for us. “Safety has always been an issue prime directive was for AWS. AWS is also characterized by a wide range of its own services and more and better integrations with external software. “In addition, AWS has reduced its prices several times, while Microsoft has increased prices for Office and Azure several times.”

The large selection is no exaggeration. If we look at just the database services, we get more than fifteen. AWS believes that there is a solution for every problem, but not a solution for every problem. “There are many tools tailored to different types of data. “I noticed that there were a lot of product announcements made during re:Invent this year, I think more than in previous editions,” notes Albrecht.

The proliferation of tools and solutions can work both ways for AWS. Anyone familiar with the ecosystem will enjoy the extensive menu presented to them, while the less experienced AWS programmer won’t know where to start. “AWS has invested a lot in recent years to make things easier for users,” says Albrecht.

“Previously the focus was mainly on programming in the cloud. With the introduction of CodeWhisperer, among other things, this has shifted to productivity. The announcement of Amazon Q goes one step further and is intended to anchor AI even deeper in the lives of the organization and the individual. I find it fascinating that the integration of AI at all levels of an organization is progressing so quickly.”

The future is multicloud, but not yet in Belgium

Albrecht leads the collaboration with AWS within the Cronos Group, but the Belgian IT service provider also has good relationships with Microsoft and Google Cloud. In June we published a detailed double interview about the partnership with Microsoft. “As a professional IT service provider, we have no choice. The future of IT is multicloud. That’s why it’s important to us to be an important local partner for all major providers,” explains Albrecht.

However, Belgian companies do not seem to have yet embraced the idea of ​​multicloud. In our survey, barely one in ten said they combined the services of several providers. “In Scandinavia, for example, multicloud adoption is much more advanced. It is no longer exceptional for companies to work with two vendors or even “the big three” and weigh workload by workload what they want to run and where. In Belgium we still seem to be a bit afraid of this method. Belgian companies are usually tied to a fixed cloud provider.”

If the Belgian IT industry gets on the multi-cloud bandwagon soon, it could re-order the cards and give AWS a chance to catch up with Microsoft. The current relationships are certainly not set in stone yet. The big providers, on the other hand, will have to learn to divide the cake among themselves.

Belgian companies are still a little afraid of multicloud. We are usually tied to a fixed provider.

Hendrik Albrecht, Business Development Manager, The Cronos Group