Cloud technology has been great for organisations of all types across the world, delivering inter-related ecosystems, keeping costs down and driving productivity. However, there’s still a key problem that needs to be addressed – there are simply not enough clouds. The market currently resembles an oligopoly, with a handful of providers dwarfing all others in size, scale and reach.

The world’s 26 richest people own as much as the poorest 50% and just 100 companies (mostly in the oil industry) are arguably responsible for 71% of the world’s carbon emissions. It’s tempting to draw a sneaky correlation between wealth inequality and climate problems, but that would be unscientific (to say the least!) and not the objective of this article in any case. However, there is some evidence that we’re also well on our way to creating data oligopolies. IDC reckons that half of the world’s data will be stored in clouds by 2025, so if dominance of the cloud industry continues as is we can be quite sure of exacerbated industry inequality. Read more