Cloud meets customer: IT service providers in the public cloud ecosystem

Abstract

Over the past 2 decades, the cloud computing market has evolved into a global oligopoly dominated by a few major players, including Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud, which offer highly scalable and technologically advanced platforms. The variety and complexity of their offerings necessitate complementing services—ranging from advice on benefits and risks of cloud transformation via implementation and migration projects to continuously operating, securing, and optimizing a cloud environment. The range of customer demands is as vast as the number of ways to respond. This study synthesizes the broad range of services in this area, as well as the corresponding market demands and preconditions to provide such services. We suggest a framework designed to help the stakeholders in this market navigate a dynamic, evolving ecosystem comprised of hyperscalers, IT service providers, and their customers, and provide recommendations to address existing challenges.