The influence of the hyperscale tech giants over the industry was a major topic this past year, but we also saw the emergence of a new type of cloud player in the form of neocloud. Here are Computer Weekly’s top 10 cloud computing stories of 2025
The influence of the hyperscale tech giants over the industry was a major topic this past year, but we also saw the emergence of a new type of cloud player in the form of neocloud. Here are Computer Weekly’s top 10 cloud computing stories of 2025
One topic that has continued to dominate the cloud computing news cycle in 2025 is the growing hold the hyperscale tech giants, namely Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft, have on the industry.
This year has seen the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) conclude its lengthy investigation into the UK cloud infrastructure services market, and – as part of that – call out the impact AWS and Microsoft’s behaviour is having on the sector’s other participants.
The hold that AWS has on the UK public sector has come in for scrutiny once more this year, along with Microsoft’s treatment of the policing sector’s data, while the government has come under fire for failing to do more to open up the market to smaller cloud companies.
Among this, a new category of cloud player – in the form of the neocloud suppliers – emerged in 2025 that specialise in the provision of compute infrastructure used to almost exclusively handle artificial intelligence (AI) workloads
Against this backdrop, here are Computer Weekly’s top 10 cloud computing stories of 2025.1. UK government under fire over public sector guidance on using overseas clouds
The government found itself fielding criticism in February 2025, following the publication of guidance by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) to public sector bodies on how to safely and securely host data in overseas datacentres.
The guidance states that public sector organisations can use cloud services that are hosted in datacentres outside of the UK for “resilience, capacity and access to innovation” reasons.
However, the advice was interpreted by some cloud market stakeholders interviewed by Computer Weekly as being an instruction for public sector buyers not to use the services of homegrown suppliers if it is cheaper to buy them from overseas cloud providers.2. HMRC’s hunt for hyperscaler to lead £500m datacentre exit project deemed ‘anti-competitive’
HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) also incurred the wrath of the UK cloud market in May 2025, following the publication of a tender document for the government tax collection agency’s decade-long £500m datacentre exit and cloud migration project.
