Exponential Technology Report 2026: Cloud, Edge and Distributed Computing

S.1Abstract

S.2Key messages

Six readings that frame the cloud baseline, and the eight questions this edition answers, each with its status and source.

1. About 415 TWh worldwide in 2024, 1.5% of the total, per the IEA.¹

   How much electricity do data centres use?Reported

2. In Ireland data centres used 22% of metered electricity in 2024; in the US 4.4% in 2023.³⁴

   Is it a national issue?Reported

3. Operators report PUE of 1.09 to 1.15, against baselines that differ.⁵⁷

   How efficient are the large operators?Reported

4. Operator figures exist but use different methods; one projection is modelled.⁶⁸

   What about water?Reported

5. Three providers held 63% of cloud infrastructure revenue in Q2 2026.¹⁰

   How concentrated is the market?Reported

6. Competition reviews in the UK and EU, and the Data Act switching rules.¹¹¹²¹⁶

   What are regulators doing?Reported

7. A single regional fault disrupted AWS services for 14 hours 32 minutes in 2025.²⁰

   Do outages cascade?Reported

8. A fault in a shared control plane while dependence is concentrated. SCN-XT08-DEP-01

   What will 2027 test first?Expert input

S.3Headline finding

ReportedEQL 4NRF-XTECH-CLOUD-GLOBAL-2026-BASELINE-INF-011

Three large cloud and network events in 2025 lasted from 3 hours 10 minutes to 14 hours 32 minutes, each traced by its operator to an internal fault.

Each operator traced its event to an internal fault: a latent race condition in a DNS system for a regional database service at AWS²⁰, blank fields in policy data that crashed a control service at Google Cloud²¹, and a feature file that doubled in size at Cloudflare, which stated that no cyber attack was involved²². Services built on these platforms failed together. The reports do not say how many customers or public services were affected.

S.4At a glance

S.5What each steward reads in it

S.6What this edition is, and is not

Notes

Numbers are the edition’s reference numbers, so a note reads the same in every chapter. The full list, with every source and its licence, is in Annex C. Annex C, references

1. 1UNVERIFIED, not opened: IEA (ed.), Energy and AI (data centres about 415 TWh in 2024, about 1.5% of global electricity; about 945 TWh in the 2030 base case; about 1,200 TWh in 2035 with a range of 700 to 1,700), taken from search-result summaries; the report pages returned access errors. International Energy Agency, Paris. Observation year 2024. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
2. 2Shehabi, A. et al., 2024 United States Data Center Energy Usage Report, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, published 19 December 2024, DOI 10.71468/P1WC7Q (publication page; the page gives authors and a scenario range to 2028 but no figures; figures read in the DOE summary [3]). Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley. Observation year 2023. Accessed 2026-11-03. doi:10.71468/P1WC7Qback
3. 3US Department of Energy (ed.), DOE releases new report evaluating increase in electricity demand from data centres (20 December 2024; about 4.4% of US electricity in 2023; 6.7 to 12% projected for 2028; 58 TWh in 2014 and 176 TWh in 2023). US Department of Energy, Washington. Observation year 2023. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
4. 4Central Statistics Office (ed.), Data Centres Metered Electricity Consumption 2024 (statistical release of 10 June 2025; 22% of metered electricity in 2024, 21% in 2023; the GWh table was not in the content read). Central Statistics Office, Cork. Observation year 2024. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
5. 10Synergy Research Group (ed.), Q2 Cloud Market Passes $143 Billion; Highest Growth Rate in Eight Years (release of 30 July 2026; Amazon 28%, Microsoft 20%, Google 15%; quarterly revenue USD 143.4 billion; growth 43%; definition IaaS, PaaS and hosted private cloud; industry analyst). Synergy Research Group, Reno. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
6. 11UK Competition and Markets Authority (ed.), Cloud services market investigation (case page; final decision published 31 July 2025; recommends prioritising strategic market status investigations of Microsoft and AWS; board decision expected in the first quarter of 2026; the decision documents were not opened). Competition and Markets Authority, London. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
7. 12European Commission (ed.), Commission opens market investigations into cloud computing services under the Digital Markets Act (announcement of 18 November 2025; two investigations on whether AWS and Microsoft Azure should be designated and one on whether the DMA fits cloud). Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology, Brussels. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
8. 16European Commission (ed.), Data Act explained (policy page; switching charges including data egress charges removed from 12 January 2027; transitional period 11 January 2024 to 12 January 2027; notice period not on the page). Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology, Brussels. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
9. 20Amazon Web Services (ed.), Summary of the Amazon DynamoDB Service Disruption in the Northern Virginia (US-EAST-1) Region (post-event summary; 19 October 11:48 PM to 20 October 2:20 PM PDT; latent race condition in the DNS management system for the regional endpoint; services and times listed; operator report). Amazon Web Services, Seattle. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
10. 5Google (ed.), 2025 Environmental Report (PDF; fiscal year 2024; data centre electricity consumption up 27%, data centre energy emissions down 12%, fleet PUE 1.09 against a stated industry average of 1.56, water consumption up 28%; company-reported). Google, Mountain View. Observation year 2024. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
11. 7Amazon (ed.), 2024 Amazon Sustainability Report (PDF; AWS global PUE 1.15 in 2024 against a stated public cloud industry average of 1.25 and 1.63 for on-premises data centres, citing IDC; AWS water use effectiveness 0.15 L per kWh in 2024; company-reported). Amazon, Seattle. Observation year 2024. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
12. 6Microsoft (ed.), 2025 Environmental Data Fact Sheet (PDF; fiscal year ended 30 June 2024; Table 6 electricity consumed within the organisation 29,829,540 MWh in FY24 and 23,567,502 in FY23; Table 9 water consumption 5,807 ML in FY24 and 7,844 in FY23 after a new estimation approach; company-reported, section 1 reviewed by an external firm). Microsoft, Redmond. Observation year 2024. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
13. 8Li, P., Yang, J., Islam, M.A. and Ren, S., Making AI Less Thirsty: Uncovering and Addressing the Secret Water Footprint of AI Models, arXiv:2304.03271, v1 April 2023, v5 March 2025 (abstract page; projection of 4.2 to 6.6 billion cubic metres of water withdrawal in 2027; accepted by Communications of the ACM per the page). arXiv, Ithaca. Observation year 2023. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
14. 21Google Cloud (ed.), Incident report for the Service Control outage of 12 June 2025 (status page; 10:51 to 18:18 PDT by the incident header; mini report gives different times; policy data with blank fields caused a null pointer crash in Service Control; operator report). Google, Mountain View. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
15. 22Cloudflare (ed.), Cloudflare outage on November 18, 2025 (blog post; start 11:20 UTC; core traffic largely restored 14:30 UTC; full recovery 17:06 UTC; Bot Management feature file doubled in size and exceeded a limit of 200 features; not caused by a cyber attack, per the operator). Cloudflare, San Francisco. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back

1.1The questions this part answers

Key questions

• Where is cloud risk concentrated?
• Which couplings carry cloud shocks into other systems?
• Which cloud capabilities hold under compound stress?
• What must 2027 evidence measure first?

In this part

• Narrative
• Headline finding
• Lead figure
• Five footprint and governance chapters
• Twelve-domain reading
• Sector screens
• Dependency matrix
• Risk objects
• Capability ladder
• Scenario
• Three lenses
• Portfolio

1.2The argument

1.3Twenty couplings between five systems

The cloud-centred matrix types the twenty couplings between the five core systems, read for their cloud content. Strengths are Nexus estimates (ESTIMATED) from the cited evidence and analogue events; they set the graph that 2027 evidence will test.

Transmission paths

1. 01

   ENE → INF

   Local grid share limits siting and growth of facilities.

   Reported Ireland 22% of metered electricity⁴

2. 02

   INF → DAT

   A fault in one provider control plane interrupts many dependent services.

   Reported AWS and Google Cloud reports²⁰²¹

3. 03

   FIN → INF

   Revenue concentration funds capacity and raises dependence.

   Reported top three 63%¹⁰

4. 04

   WAT → ENE

   Cooling method trades water use against electricity use.

   Inferred operator reports⁵⁶

5. 05

   GOV → DAT

   Switching and sovereignty rules change where data and workloads sit.

   Reported Data Act and CADA proposal¹⁶¹⁸

Notes

Numbers are the edition’s reference numbers, so a note reads the same in every chapter. The full list, with every source and its licence, is in Annex C. Annex C, references

1. 1UNVERIFIED, not opened: IEA (ed.), Energy and AI (data centres about 415 TWh in 2024, about 1.5% of global electricity; about 945 TWh in the 2030 base case; about 1,200 TWh in 2035 with a range of 700 to 1,700), taken from search-result summaries; the report pages returned access errors. International Energy Agency, Paris. Observation year 2024. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
2. 10Synergy Research Group (ed.), Q2 Cloud Market Passes $143 Billion; Highest Growth Rate in Eight Years (release of 30 July 2026; Amazon 28%, Microsoft 20%, Google 15%; quarterly revenue USD 143.4 billion; growth 43%; definition IaaS, PaaS and hosted private cloud; industry analyst). Synergy Research Group, Reno. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
3. 16European Commission (ed.), Data Act explained (policy page; switching charges including data egress charges removed from 12 January 2027; transitional period 11 January 2024 to 12 January 2027; notice period not on the page). Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology, Brussels. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
4. 3US Department of Energy (ed.), DOE releases new report evaluating increase in electricity demand from data centres (20 December 2024; about 4.4% of US electricity in 2023; 6.7 to 12% projected for 2028; 58 TWh in 2014 and 176 TWh in 2023). US Department of Energy, Washington. Observation year 2023. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
5. 4Central Statistics Office (ed.), Data Centres Metered Electricity Consumption 2024 (statistical release of 10 June 2025; 22% of metered electricity in 2024, 21% in 2023; the GWh table was not in the content read). Central Statistics Office, Cork. Observation year 2024. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
6. 5Google (ed.), 2025 Environmental Report (PDF; fiscal year 2024; data centre electricity consumption up 27%, data centre energy emissions down 12%, fleet PUE 1.09 against a stated industry average of 1.56, water consumption up 28%; company-reported). Google, Mountain View. Observation year 2024. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
7. 7Amazon (ed.), 2024 Amazon Sustainability Report (PDF; AWS global PUE 1.15 in 2024 against a stated public cloud industry average of 1.25 and 1.63 for on-premises data centres, citing IDC; AWS water use effectiveness 0.15 L per kWh in 2024; company-reported). Amazon, Seattle. Observation year 2024. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
8. 11UK Competition and Markets Authority (ed.), Cloud services market investigation (case page; final decision published 31 July 2025; recommends prioritising strategic market status investigations of Microsoft and AWS; board decision expected in the first quarter of 2026; the decision documents were not opened). Competition and Markets Authority, London. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
9. 12European Commission (ed.), Commission opens market investigations into cloud computing services under the Digital Markets Act (announcement of 18 November 2025; two investigations on whether AWS and Microsoft Azure should be designated and one on whether the DMA fits cloud). Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology, Brussels. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
10. 20Amazon Web Services (ed.), Summary of the Amazon DynamoDB Service Disruption in the Northern Virginia (US-EAST-1) Region (post-event summary; 19 October 11:48 PM to 20 October 2:20 PM PDT; latent race condition in the DNS management system for the regional endpoint; services and times listed; operator report). Amazon Web Services, Seattle. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
11. 21Google Cloud (ed.), Incident report for the Service Control outage of 12 June 2025 (status page; 10:51 to 18:18 PDT by the incident header; mini report gives different times; policy data with blank fields caused a null pointer crash in Service Control; operator report). Google, Mountain View. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
12. 22Cloudflare (ed.), Cloudflare outage on November 18, 2025 (blog post; start 11:20 UTC; core traffic largely restored 14:30 UTC; full recovery 17:06 UTC; Bot Management feature file doubled in size and exceeded a limit of 200 features; not caused by a cyber attack, per the operator). Cloudflare, San Francisco. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
13. 6Microsoft (ed.), 2025 Environmental Data Fact Sheet (PDF; fiscal year ended 30 June 2024; Table 6 electricity consumed within the organisation 29,829,540 MWh in FY24 and 23,567,502 in FY23; Table 9 water consumption 5,807 ML in FY24 and 7,844 in FY23 after a new estimation approach; company-reported, section 1 reviewed by an external firm). Microsoft, Redmond. Observation year 2024. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
14. 18Euronews (ed.), EU Cloud and AI Development Act gets mixed reception (news article of 22 June 2026; three pillars; aim to triple European data centre capacity in five to seven years; acceleration zones within six months; 12-month maximum permit procedure; four assurance levels; reactions; press report of the proposal, not the proposal text). Euronews, Lyon. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03.back

2.1Headline finding

ReportedEQL 4NRF-XTECH-CLOUD-GLOBAL-2026-BASELINE-INF-011

Three large cloud and network events in 2025 lasted from 3 hours 10 minutes to 14 hours 32 minutes, each traced by its operator to an internal fault.

Implication

Each operator traced its event to an internal fault: a latent race condition in a DNS system for a regional database service at AWS²⁰, blank fields in policy data that crashed a control service at Google Cloud²¹, and a feature file that doubled in size at Cloudflare, which stated that no cyber attack was involved²². Services built on these platforms failed together. The reports do not say how many customers or public services were affected.

What would move it

Further post-event reports, any regulator reporting of cloud incidents and provider dependence registers would each move this finding.

2.2Energy

1. ReportedEQL 3NRF-XTECH-CLOUD-GLOBAL-2026-BASELINE-ENE-001

   The IEA reports that data centres used about 415 TWh of electricity in 2024, 1.5% of global electricity, and shows 945 TWh in its 2030 base case, with the United States the largest share of growth.¹

2. ReportedEQL 4NRF-XTECH-CLOUD-GLOBAL-2026-BASELINE-ENE-002

   US data centres used about 176 TWh in 2023, 4.4% of US electricity, up from 58 TWh in 2014; the national laboratory projects 6.7 to 12% of US electricity in 2028.²³

3. ReportedEQL 4NRF-XTECH-CLOUD-GLOBAL-2026-BASELINE-ENE-003

   Data centres used 22% of metered electricity in Ireland in 2024, up from 21% in 2023.⁴

4. ReportedEQL 3NRF-XTECH-CLOUD-GLOBAL-2026-BASELINE-ENE-004

   Google reports that its data centre electricity use grew 27% in 2024 while its data centre energy emissions fell 12%, and Microsoft reports company-wide electricity use of 29.8 TWh in fiscal 2024, up from 23.6 TWh.⁵⁶

5. ReportedEQL 3NRF-XTECH-CLOUD-GLOBAL-2026-BASELINE-ENE-005

   Operators report fleet efficiency, with Google at a PUE of 1.09 and AWS at 1.15 in 2024, but each compares itself with a different industry average, from 1.25 to 1.56.⁵⁷⁹

2.3Water

1. ReportedEQL 3NRF-XTECH-CLOUD-GLOBAL-2026-BASELINE-WAT-006

   Microsoft reports water consumption of 5,807 megalitres in fiscal 2024, down from 7,844 after a change of estimation method, and 46% of its withdrawals in areas of water stress; Google reports water consumption up 28% in 2024.⁵⁶

2. ReportedEQL 2NRF-XTECH-CLOUD-GLOBAL-2026-BASELINE-WAT-007

   A modelling preprint projects that global AI demand could need 4.2 to 6.6 billion cubic metres of water withdrawal in 2027; it is a projection, not a measurement.⁸

2.4Finance

1. ReportedEQL 3NRF-XTECH-CLOUD-GLOBAL-2026-BASELINE-FIN-008

   Three providers held 63% of cloud infrastructure revenue in the second quarter of 2026, which was USD 143.4 billion and 43% above the year before, according to an industry analyst.¹⁰

2.5Governance

1. ReportedEQL 4NRF-XTECH-CLOUD-GLOBAL-2026-BASELINE-GOV-009

   The UK competition authority published its final cloud market decision on 31 July 2025 and recommended strategic market status investigations of Microsoft and AWS; the European Commission opened three DMA cloud market investigations on 18 November 2025.^11121314

2. ReportedEQL 5NRF-XTECH-CLOUD-GLOBAL-2026-BASELINE-GOV-010

   The EU Data Act has applied since 12 September 2025 and removes cloud switching and data egress charges from 12 January 2027.¹⁵¹⁶

2.6Infrastructure

1. ReportedEQL 4NRF-XTECH-CLOUD-GLOBAL-2026-BASELINE-INF-011

   Operator reports describe three large events: AWS us-east-1 for 14 hours 32 minutes in October 2025, Google Cloud for about 7 hours 27 minutes in June 2025, and Cloudflare for 3 hours 10 minutes until core traffic was largely restored in November 2025.²⁰²¹²²

2.7Systemic

1. Expert inputEQL 2NRF-XTECH-CLOUD-GLOBAL-2026-BASELINE-SYS-012

   The leading compound pathway for 2027 testing is a fault in a shared provider control plane while dependence is concentrated and sovereignty rules diverge. § scenario

Notes

Numbers are the edition’s reference numbers, so a note reads the same in every chapter. The full list, with every source and its licence, is in Annex C. Annex C, references

1. 20Amazon Web Services (ed.), Summary of the Amazon DynamoDB Service Disruption in the Northern Virginia (US-EAST-1) Region (post-event summary; 19 October 11:48 PM to 20 October 2:20 PM PDT; latent race condition in the DNS management system for the regional endpoint; services and times listed; operator report). Amazon Web Services, Seattle. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
2. 21Google Cloud (ed.), Incident report for the Service Control outage of 12 June 2025 (status page; 10:51 to 18:18 PDT by the incident header; mini report gives different times; policy data with blank fields caused a null pointer crash in Service Control; operator report). Google, Mountain View. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
3. 22Cloudflare (ed.), Cloudflare outage on November 18, 2025 (blog post; start 11:20 UTC; core traffic largely restored 14:30 UTC; full recovery 17:06 UTC; Bot Management feature file doubled in size and exceeded a limit of 200 features; not caused by a cyber attack, per the operator). Cloudflare, San Francisco. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
4. 1UNVERIFIED, not opened: IEA (ed.), Energy and AI (data centres about 415 TWh in 2024, about 1.5% of global electricity; about 945 TWh in the 2030 base case; about 1,200 TWh in 2035 with a range of 700 to 1,700), taken from search-result summaries; the report pages returned access errors. International Energy Agency, Paris. Observation year 2024. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
5. 2Shehabi, A. et al., 2024 United States Data Center Energy Usage Report, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, published 19 December 2024, DOI 10.71468/P1WC7Q (publication page; the page gives authors and a scenario range to 2028 but no figures; figures read in the DOE summary [3]). Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley. Observation year 2023. Accessed 2026-11-03. doi:10.71468/P1WC7Qback
6. 3US Department of Energy (ed.), DOE releases new report evaluating increase in electricity demand from data centres (20 December 2024; about 4.4% of US electricity in 2023; 6.7 to 12% projected for 2028; 58 TWh in 2014 and 176 TWh in 2023). US Department of Energy, Washington. Observation year 2023. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
7. 4Central Statistics Office (ed.), Data Centres Metered Electricity Consumption 2024 (statistical release of 10 June 2025; 22% of metered electricity in 2024, 21% in 2023; the GWh table was not in the content read). Central Statistics Office, Cork. Observation year 2024. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
8. 5Google (ed.), 2025 Environmental Report (PDF; fiscal year 2024; data centre electricity consumption up 27%, data centre energy emissions down 12%, fleet PUE 1.09 against a stated industry average of 1.56, water consumption up 28%; company-reported). Google, Mountain View. Observation year 2024. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
9. 6Microsoft (ed.), 2025 Environmental Data Fact Sheet (PDF; fiscal year ended 30 June 2024; Table 6 electricity consumed within the organisation 29,829,540 MWh in FY24 and 23,567,502 in FY23; Table 9 water consumption 5,807 ML in FY24 and 7,844 in FY23 after a new estimation approach; company-reported, section 1 reviewed by an external firm). Microsoft, Redmond. Observation year 2024. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
10. 7Amazon (ed.), 2024 Amazon Sustainability Report (PDF; AWS global PUE 1.15 in 2024 against a stated public cloud industry average of 1.25 and 1.63 for on-premises data centres, citing IDC; AWS water use effectiveness 0.15 L per kWh in 2024; company-reported). Amazon, Seattle. Observation year 2024. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
11. 9UNVERIFIED, not opened: Uptime Institute (ed.), Global Data Center Survey 2025 (average PUE 1.54; power the cause of 45% of outages), taken from search-result summaries; the survey page returned an access error. Uptime Institute, New York. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
12. 8Li, P., Yang, J., Islam, M.A. and Ren, S., Making AI Less Thirsty: Uncovering and Addressing the Secret Water Footprint of AI Models, arXiv:2304.03271, v1 April 2023, v5 March 2025 (abstract page; projection of 4.2 to 6.6 billion cubic metres of water withdrawal in 2027; accepted by Communications of the ACM per the page). arXiv, Ithaca. Observation year 2023. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
13. 10Synergy Research Group (ed.), Q2 Cloud Market Passes $143 Billion; Highest Growth Rate in Eight Years (release of 30 July 2026; Amazon 28%, Microsoft 20%, Google 15%; quarterly revenue USD 143.4 billion; growth 43%; definition IaaS, PaaS and hosted private cloud; industry analyst). Synergy Research Group, Reno. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
14. 11UK Competition and Markets Authority (ed.), Cloud services market investigation (case page; final decision published 31 July 2025; recommends prioritising strategic market status investigations of Microsoft and AWS; board decision expected in the first quarter of 2026; the decision documents were not opened). Competition and Markets Authority, London. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
15. 12European Commission (ed.), Commission opens market investigations into cloud computing services under the Digital Markets Act (announcement of 18 November 2025; two investigations on whether AWS and Microsoft Azure should be designated and one on whether the DMA fits cloud). Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology, Brussels. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
16. 13The Register (ed.), Brussels eyes AWS, Azure for gatekeeper tag in cloud clampdown (news article of 18 November 2025; possible obligations and fines up to 10% of worldwide turnover; trade press, secondary). Situation Publishing, London. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
17. 14UNVERIFIED, not opened: trade press reports of mid-2026 that the Commission informed Amazon and Microsoft of a preliminary view that they should be designated as gatekeepers for cloud, taken from search-result summaries; the one article fetched returned an access error. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
18. 15European Commission (ed.), Data Act (policy page; applicable from 12 September 2025; entered into force in January 2024). Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology, Brussels. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
19. 16European Commission (ed.), Data Act explained (policy page; switching charges including data egress charges removed from 12 January 2027; transitional period 11 January 2024 to 12 January 2027; notice period not on the page). Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology, Brussels. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back

3.1Where each system stood at evidence close

3.2Domain posture

Each of the twelve coupled domains is read through cloud, in words, not scored. The coupling column names the dependency that carries cloud risk into each domain.

3.3Sector screens

All sixteen sectors are screened for their dependence on cloud, on the same grammar as every national edition. The evidence column describes coverage of the baseline evidence, not the performance of the sector.

Notes

Numbers are the edition’s reference numbers, so a note reads the same in every chapter. The full list, with every source and its licence, is in Annex C. Annex C, references

1. 1UNVERIFIED, not opened: IEA (ed.), Energy and AI (data centres about 415 TWh in 2024, about 1.5% of global electricity; about 945 TWh in the 2030 base case; about 1,200 TWh in 2035 with a range of 700 to 1,700), taken from search-result summaries; the report pages returned access errors. International Energy Agency, Paris. Observation year 2024. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
2. 2Shehabi, A. et al., 2024 United States Data Center Energy Usage Report, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, published 19 December 2024, DOI 10.71468/P1WC7Q (publication page; the page gives authors and a scenario range to 2028 but no figures; figures read in the DOE summary [3]). Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley. Observation year 2023. Accessed 2026-11-03. doi:10.71468/P1WC7Qback
3. 3US Department of Energy (ed.), DOE releases new report evaluating increase in electricity demand from data centres (20 December 2024; about 4.4% of US electricity in 2023; 6.7 to 12% projected for 2028; 58 TWh in 2014 and 176 TWh in 2023). US Department of Energy, Washington. Observation year 2023. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
4. 4Central Statistics Office (ed.), Data Centres Metered Electricity Consumption 2024 (statistical release of 10 June 2025; 22% of metered electricity in 2024, 21% in 2023; the GWh table was not in the content read). Central Statistics Office, Cork. Observation year 2024. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
5. 10Synergy Research Group (ed.), Q2 Cloud Market Passes $143 Billion; Highest Growth Rate in Eight Years (release of 30 July 2026; Amazon 28%, Microsoft 20%, Google 15%; quarterly revenue USD 143.4 billion; growth 43%; definition IaaS, PaaS and hosted private cloud; industry analyst). Synergy Research Group, Reno. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
6. 20Amazon Web Services (ed.), Summary of the Amazon DynamoDB Service Disruption in the Northern Virginia (US-EAST-1) Region (post-event summary; 19 October 11:48 PM to 20 October 2:20 PM PDT; latent race condition in the DNS management system for the regional endpoint; services and times listed; operator report). Amazon Web Services, Seattle. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
7. 16European Commission (ed.), Data Act explained (policy page; switching charges including data egress charges removed from 12 January 2027; transitional period 11 January 2024 to 12 January 2027; notice period not on the page). Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology, Brussels. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
8. 6Microsoft (ed.), 2025 Environmental Data Fact Sheet (PDF; fiscal year ended 30 June 2024; Table 6 electricity consumed within the organisation 29,829,540 MWh in FY24 and 23,567,502 in FY23; Table 9 water consumption 5,807 ML in FY24 and 7,844 in FY23 after a new estimation approach; company-reported, section 1 reviewed by an external firm). Microsoft, Redmond. Observation year 2024. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
9. 8Li, P., Yang, J., Islam, M.A. and Ren, S., Making AI Less Thirsty: Uncovering and Addressing the Secret Water Footprint of AI Models, arXiv:2304.03271, v1 April 2023, v5 March 2025 (abstract page; projection of 4.2 to 6.6 billion cubic metres of water withdrawal in 2027; accepted by Communications of the ACM per the page). arXiv, Ithaca. Observation year 2023. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
10. 5Google (ed.), 2025 Environmental Report (PDF; fiscal year 2024; data centre electricity consumption up 27%, data centre energy emissions down 12%, fleet PUE 1.09 against a stated industry average of 1.56, water consumption up 28%; company-reported). Google, Mountain View. Observation year 2024. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
11. 18Euronews (ed.), EU Cloud and AI Development Act gets mixed reception (news article of 22 June 2026; three pillars; aim to triple European data centre capacity in five to seven years; acceleration zones within six months; 12-month maximum permit procedure; four assurance levels; reactions; press report of the proposal, not the proposal text). Euronews, Lyon. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
12. 21Google Cloud (ed.), Incident report for the Service Control outage of 12 June 2025 (status page; 10:51 to 18:18 PDT by the incident header; mini report gives different times; policy data with blank fields caused a null pointer crash in Service Control; operator report). Google, Mountain View. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
13. 22Cloudflare (ed.), Cloudflare outage on November 18, 2025 (blog post; start 11:20 UTC; core traffic largely restored 14:30 UTC; full recovery 17:06 UTC; Bot Management feature file doubled in size and exceeded a limit of 200 features; not caused by a cyber attack, per the operator). Cloudflare, San Francisco. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
14. 24US General Services Administration (ed.), FedRAMP 20x (programme page; announced March 2025; phase 1 26 submissions; first pilot authorisations 6 March 2026; phase 3 wide-scale adoption active; new Rev5 submissions stop 11 June 2027, a future date that may change). FedRAMP, Washington. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
15. 11UK Competition and Markets Authority (ed.), Cloud services market investigation (case page; final decision published 31 July 2025; recommends prioritising strategic market status investigations of Microsoft and AWS; board decision expected in the first quarter of 2026; the decision documents were not opened). Competition and Markets Authority, London. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
16. 12European Commission (ed.), Commission opens market investigations into cloud computing services under the Digital Markets Act (announcement of 18 November 2025; two investigations on whether AWS and Microsoft Azure should be designated and one on whether the DMA fits cloud). Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology, Brussels. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
17. 25NIST (ed.), The NIST Definition of Cloud Computing, NIST SP 800-145 (publication page; September 2011; five essential characteristics, three service models and four deployment models). National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg. Observation year 2011. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
18. 28Armbrust, M. et al., Above the Clouds: A Berkeley View of Cloud Computing, Technical Report UCB/EECS-2009-28, 10 February 2009 (report page and abstract). University of California, Berkeley. Observation year 2009. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
19. 29Cloud Native Computing Foundation (ed.), CNCF Annual Survey 2024 (report page; tenth annual survey; 750 respondents in fall 2024; Kubernetes percentage not on the page). CNCF, San Francisco. Observation year 2024. Accessed 2026-11-03.back

4.1Risk objects

Each risk is read across the chain from hazard to consequence, with its status and evidence-quality level.

1. InferredEQL 4RSK-XT08-INF-001

   Shared control-plane failure

   Driver

   internal faults at large providers²⁰²¹²²

   Exposure

   services that depend on one provider or region

   Vulnerability

   hidden dependencies; single-region designs

   Capacity

   operator post-event reports; DORA oversight¹⁷²⁰

   Cascade

   INF → DAT → FIN, HLT

   Horizon

   1 to 5 years

2. InferredEQL 3RSK-XT08-ENE-002

   Local grid constraint

   Driver

   rising data centre load¹²⁴

   Exposure

   regions with high data centre share

   Vulnerability

   slow grid connection; local opposition

   Capacity

   permitting proposals; efficiency reporting¹⁸¹⁹

   Cascade

   ENE → INF

   Horizon

   1 to 5 years

3. Expert inputEQL 2RSK-XT08-WAT-003

   Water stress at cooling sites

   Driver

   cooling demand and warm climates⁶⁸

   Exposure

   facilities in water-stressed areas

   Vulnerability

   non-comparable water metrics

   Capacity

   operator replenishment and air-cooling choices⁵⁶

   Cascade

   WAT → ENE → INF

   Horizon

   1 to 10 years

4. InferredEQL 3RSK-XT08-GOV-004

   Fragmented sovereignty and concentration

   Driver

   competition reviews and sovereignty rules¹¹¹²¹⁸

   Exposure

   cross-border workloads; public procurement

   Vulnerability

   diverging rules; lock-in before switching charges end¹⁶

   Capacity

   Data Act switching rights; sovereign offerings¹⁶²³

   Cascade

   GOV → INF, FIN

   Horizon

   1 to 5 years

4.2Capability ladder

Existence is not readiness. Each of the fifteen capability functions is placed on the ladder by the strongest public evidence for cloud at the global level.

Notes

Numbers are the edition’s reference numbers, so a note reads the same in every chapter. The full list, with every source and its licence, is in Annex C. Annex C, references

1. 20Amazon Web Services (ed.), Summary of the Amazon DynamoDB Service Disruption in the Northern Virginia (US-EAST-1) Region (post-event summary; 19 October 11:48 PM to 20 October 2:20 PM PDT; latent race condition in the DNS management system for the regional endpoint; services and times listed; operator report). Amazon Web Services, Seattle. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
2. 21Google Cloud (ed.), Incident report for the Service Control outage of 12 June 2025 (status page; 10:51 to 18:18 PDT by the incident header; mini report gives different times; policy data with blank fields caused a null pointer crash in Service Control; operator report). Google, Mountain View. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
3. 22Cloudflare (ed.), Cloudflare outage on November 18, 2025 (blog post; start 11:20 UTC; core traffic largely restored 14:30 UTC; full recovery 17:06 UTC; Bot Management feature file doubled in size and exceeded a limit of 200 features; not caused by a cyber attack, per the operator). Cloudflare, San Francisco. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
4. 17European Securities and Markets Authority (ed.), Digital Operational Resilience Act (page; applies from 17 January 2025; lists materials on critical ICT third-party provider designation; no designations on the page). ESMA, Paris. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
5. 1UNVERIFIED, not opened: IEA (ed.), Energy and AI (data centres about 415 TWh in 2024, about 1.5% of global electricity; about 945 TWh in the 2030 base case; about 1,200 TWh in 2035 with a range of 700 to 1,700), taken from search-result summaries; the report pages returned access errors. International Energy Agency, Paris. Observation year 2024. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
6. 2Shehabi, A. et al., 2024 United States Data Center Energy Usage Report, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, published 19 December 2024, DOI 10.71468/P1WC7Q (publication page; the page gives authors and a scenario range to 2028 but no figures; figures read in the DOE summary [3]). Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley. Observation year 2023. Accessed 2026-11-03. doi:10.71468/P1WC7Qback
7. 4Central Statistics Office (ed.), Data Centres Metered Electricity Consumption 2024 (statistical release of 10 June 2025; 22% of metered electricity in 2024, 21% in 2023; the GWh table was not in the content read). Central Statistics Office, Cork. Observation year 2024. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
8. 18Euronews (ed.), EU Cloud and AI Development Act gets mixed reception (news article of 22 June 2026; three pillars; aim to triple European data centre capacity in five to seven years; acceleration zones within six months; 12-month maximum permit procedure; four assurance levels; reactions; press report of the proposal, not the proposal text). Euronews, Lyon. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
9. 19European Commission (ed.), Energy Efficiency Directive (policy page; states a data centre energy efficiency package planned for the third quarter of 2026 and links to reporting of data centre energy consumption; no threshold or dates on the page). Directorate-General for Energy, Brussels. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
10. 6Microsoft (ed.), 2025 Environmental Data Fact Sheet (PDF; fiscal year ended 30 June 2024; Table 6 electricity consumed within the organisation 29,829,540 MWh in FY24 and 23,567,502 in FY23; Table 9 water consumption 5,807 ML in FY24 and 7,844 in FY23 after a new estimation approach; company-reported, section 1 reviewed by an external firm). Microsoft, Redmond. Observation year 2024. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
11. 8Li, P., Yang, J., Islam, M.A. and Ren, S., Making AI Less Thirsty: Uncovering and Addressing the Secret Water Footprint of AI Models, arXiv:2304.03271, v1 April 2023, v5 March 2025 (abstract page; projection of 4.2 to 6.6 billion cubic metres of water withdrawal in 2027; accepted by Communications of the ACM per the page). arXiv, Ithaca. Observation year 2023. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
12. 5Google (ed.), 2025 Environmental Report (PDF; fiscal year 2024; data centre electricity consumption up 27%, data centre energy emissions down 12%, fleet PUE 1.09 against a stated industry average of 1.56, water consumption up 28%; company-reported). Google, Mountain View. Observation year 2024. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
13. 11UK Competition and Markets Authority (ed.), Cloud services market investigation (case page; final decision published 31 July 2025; recommends prioritising strategic market status investigations of Microsoft and AWS; board decision expected in the first quarter of 2026; the decision documents were not opened). Competition and Markets Authority, London. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
14. 12European Commission (ed.), Commission opens market investigations into cloud computing services under the Digital Markets Act (announcement of 18 November 2025; two investigations on whether AWS and Microsoft Azure should be designated and one on whether the DMA fits cloud). Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology, Brussels. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
15. 16European Commission (ed.), Data Act explained (policy page; switching charges including data egress charges removed from 12 January 2027; transitional period 11 January 2024 to 12 January 2027; notice period not on the page). Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology, Brussels. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
16. 23Amazon Web Services (ed.), Opening the AWS European Sovereign Cloud (blog announcement of 14 January 2026; Brandenburg region; investment of EUR 7.8 billion stated; vendor announcement, weak evidence). Amazon Web Services, Seattle. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
17. 7Amazon (ed.), 2024 Amazon Sustainability Report (PDF; AWS global PUE 1.15 in 2024 against a stated public cloud industry average of 1.25 and 1.63 for on-premises data centres, citing IDC; AWS water use effectiveness 0.15 L per kWh in 2024; company-reported). Amazon, Seattle. Observation year 2024. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
18. 35UNVERIFIED, not opened: Directive (EU) 2023/1791 on energy efficiency, Article 12 on data centre reporting, Official Journal of the European Union, 2023, cited from memory; the page returned no content. Observation year 2023. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
19. 24US General Services Administration (ed.), FedRAMP 20x (programme page; announced March 2025; phase 1 26 submissions; first pilot authorisations 6 March 2026; phase 3 wide-scale adoption active; new Rev5 submissions stop 11 June 2027, a future date that may change). FedRAMP, Washington. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
20. 40UNVERIFIED, not opened: Microsoft (ed.), Azure Front Door incident reports of October 2025, cited from memory; the page returned an error and no figure is used. Microsoft, Redmond. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
21. 10Synergy Research Group (ed.), Q2 Cloud Market Passes $143 Billion; Highest Growth Rate in Eight Years (release of 30 July 2026; Amazon 28%, Microsoft 20%, Google 15%; quarterly revenue USD 143.4 billion; growth 43%; definition IaaS, PaaS and hosted private cloud; industry analyst). Synergy Research Group, Reno. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
22. 25NIST (ed.), The NIST Definition of Cloud Computing, NIST SP 800-145 (publication page; September 2011; five essential characteristics, three service models and four deployment models). National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg. Observation year 2011. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
23. 30ETSI (ed.), Multi-access Edge Computing (technology page; industry specification group; news item of 31 October 2025 on Phase 4 specifications and a white paper; no counts on the page). European Telecommunications Standards Institute, Sophia Antipolis. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
24. 28Armbrust, M. et al., Above the Clouds: A Berkeley View of Cloud Computing, Technical Report UCB/EECS-2009-28, 10 February 2009 (report page and abstract). University of California, Berkeley. Observation year 2009. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
25. 31UNVERIFIED, not opened: Masanet, E., Shehabi, A., Lei, N., Smith, S. and Koomey, J., Recalibrating global data centre energy-use estimates, Science 367, 984 to 986, 2020, cited from memory; the page returned an access error. Observation year 2020. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
26. 32UNVERIFIED, not opened: Satyanarayanan, M., The emergence of edge computing, Computer 50(1), 30 to 39, 2017, cited from memory. Observation year 2017. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
27. 33UNVERIFIED, not opened: Shi, W., Cao, J., Zhang, Q., Li, Y. and Xu, L., Edge computing: vision and challenges, IEEE Internet of Things Journal 3(5), 637 to 646, 2016, cited from memory. Observation year 2016. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
28. 34UNVERIFIED, not opened: Barroso, L.A., Clidaras, J. and Hölzle, U., The Datacenter as a Computer: Designing Warehouse-Scale Machines, third edition, Morgan and Claypool, 2018, cited from memory. Observation year 2018. Accessed 2026-11-03.back

5.1Assumptions

Scenario SCN-XT08-DEP-01: what is assumed, and what is held constant.

Baseline

the 2026 reference state in this edition

Drivers

a fault in a shared provider control plane lasts many hours while public services depend on it and sovereignty rules limit failover

Analogues

the 2025 events at AWS, Google Cloud and Cloudflare²⁰²¹²²

Interventions

none modelled: the specification describes the unmitigated case

Run state

narrative specification; quantified run scheduled for 2027

5.2The cascade, step by step

1. 1

   INF → DAT

   a control-plane fault interrupts dependent services in one region

   2025

2. 2

   DAT → FIN

   payment and business services stall until recovery

   2025

3. 3

   DAT → HLT

   hosted records and booking services become unavailable

   2025

4. 4

   GOV → INF

   sovereignty rules limit moves between providers or regions

   2026

5. 5

   ENE → INF

   recovery load meets local grid limits at the host region

   2024

6. 6

   FIN → INF

   customers re-weigh dependence as switching charges end

   2025

5.3The scenario as a table of steps

How the shock in scenario SCN-XT08-DEP-01 would travel through Cloud, Edge and Distributed Computing’s coupled systems, step by step, under the assumptions the edition states.

A teaching model of a conditional scenario under the edition’s stated assumptions: not a forecast, not a prediction and not a warning. Sources: Cloud, Edge and Distributed Computing 2026, scenario SCN-XT08-DEP-01 (2026); Cloud, Edge and Distributed Computing 2026, references (NR-CIT-1) (2026).

Notes

Numbers are the edition’s reference numbers, so a note reads the same in every chapter. The full list, with every source and its licence, is in Annex C. Annex C, references

1. 20Amazon Web Services (ed.), Summary of the Amazon DynamoDB Service Disruption in the Northern Virginia (US-EAST-1) Region (post-event summary; 19 October 11:48 PM to 20 October 2:20 PM PDT; latent race condition in the DNS management system for the regional endpoint; services and times listed; operator report). Amazon Web Services, Seattle. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
2. 21Google Cloud (ed.), Incident report for the Service Control outage of 12 June 2025 (status page; 10:51 to 18:18 PDT by the incident header; mini report gives different times; policy data with blank fields caused a null pointer crash in Service Control; operator report). Google, Mountain View. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
3. 22Cloudflare (ed.), Cloudflare outage on November 18, 2025 (blog post; start 11:20 UTC; core traffic largely restored 14:30 UTC; full recovery 17:06 UTC; Bot Management feature file doubled in size and exceeded a limit of 200 features; not caused by a cyber attack, per the operator). Cloudflare, San Francisco. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back

6.1The other desks’ editions of this subject

Federation: each desk writes its own edition for the subjects in its remit. Until a desk releases, its edition shows its frame and the reading this edition printed for it.

6.2Three lenses

One edition, read by each steward. The lens of this site comes first.

6.3Standards, Academy and steward contributions

How the Nexus Standards drafts, the Risk Academy and the three stewards feed each quarterly edition for cloud. The standards are a preparatory working draft (2026) and are cited as drafts, never as adopted standards.

6.4GCRI reading: the model card

GCRI’s reading of this edition is its model card: what the national model is, what it computes and where it stops. It is printed in full in Annex A, with the methods it belongs to. Annex A, methodology

6.5Global Risks Forum reading: editorial essays

Four signed essays by the Reports editorial team set out the positions this edition takes. They are interpretation, labelled as such; the evidence they draw on is in the findings register.

6.6Global Risks Alliance reading: 2027 cloud readiness pack

The registers that open the 2027 global cycle. At baseline each is initialised from this edition.

Publication dispositions

• Publish
• Hold
• Needs evidence
• Restricted
• Superseded

6.7Nexus Standards reading: standards and regulatory watch

Instruments and published guidance that shape the systems in this edition, by status on the retrieval date. The edition assesses no one’s compliance.

• IN FORCE
• PUBLISHED
• PROPOSAL
• PUBLISHED · VOLUNTARY

6.8Risk Academy reading: literature and evidence review, science and assessments

The review behind this edition covers cloud assessments, peer-reviewed science and the institutional reports that bind its findings. Systematic reviews for each agenda item begin in 2027.

Review protocol

Question

What does the published evidence establish about cloud, edge and distributed computing as infrastructure and its couplings?

Sources searched

foundational papers and standards; regulators and institutions; operator reports; national laboratories and statistics offices

Window

releases available at evidence close, 30 September 2026

Selection

sources that bind or contextualise a finding in this edition

Next step

systematic reviews for agenda items 01 to 05 in 2027

Notes

Numbers are the edition’s reference numbers, so a note reads the same in every chapter. The full list, with every source and its licence, is in Annex C. Annex C, references

1. 10Synergy Research Group (ed.), Q2 Cloud Market Passes $143 Billion; Highest Growth Rate in Eight Years (release of 30 July 2026; Amazon 28%, Microsoft 20%, Google 15%; quarterly revenue USD 143.4 billion; growth 43%; definition IaaS, PaaS and hosted private cloud; industry analyst). Synergy Research Group, Reno. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
2. 16European Commission (ed.), Data Act explained (policy page; switching charges including data egress charges removed from 12 January 2027; transitional period 11 January 2024 to 12 January 2027; notice period not on the page). Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology, Brussels. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
3. 25NIST (ed.), The NIST Definition of Cloud Computing, NIST SP 800-145 (publication page; September 2011; five essential characteristics, three service models and four deployment models). National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg. Observation year 2011. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
4. 26NIST (ed.), Cloud Computing Synopsis and Recommendations, NIST SP 800-146 (publication page; May 2012). National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg. Observation year 2012. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
5. 27NIST (ed.), NIST Cloud Computing Reference Architecture, NIST SP 500-292 (publication page; 8 September 2011). National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg. Observation year 2011. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
6. 42UNVERIFIED, not opened: ISO and IEC (eds.), ISO/IEC 22123-1 Cloud computing, part 1, vocabulary, cited from memory. International Organization for Standardization, Geneva. Observation year 2023. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
7. 41UNVERIFIED, not opened: ISO and IEC (eds.), ISO/IEC 30134-2 Information technology, data centres, key performance indicators, part 2, power usage effectiveness (PUE), cited from memory. International Organization for Standardization, Geneva. Observation year 2016. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
8. 15European Commission (ed.), Data Act (policy page; applicable from 12 September 2025; entered into force in January 2024). Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology, Brussels. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
9. 37UNVERIFIED, not opened: Regulation (EU) 2023/2854 (Data Act), Official Journal of the European Union, 2023, cited from memory; the page returned no content, and the policy pages [15] [16] were read instead. Observation year 2023. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
10. 17European Securities and Markets Authority (ed.), Digital Operational Resilience Act (page; applies from 17 January 2025; lists materials on critical ICT third-party provider designation; no designations on the page). ESMA, Paris. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
11. 38UNVERIFIED, not opened: Regulation (EU) 2022/2554 on digital operational resilience for the financial sector (DORA), Official Journal of the European Union, 2022, cited from memory; the ESMA page [17] was read instead. Observation year 2022. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
12. 19European Commission (ed.), Energy Efficiency Directive (policy page; states a data centre energy efficiency package planned for the third quarter of 2026 and links to reporting of data centre energy consumption; no threshold or dates on the page). Directorate-General for Energy, Brussels. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
13. 35UNVERIFIED, not opened: Directive (EU) 2023/1791 on energy efficiency, Article 12 on data centre reporting, Official Journal of the European Union, 2023, cited from memory; the page returned no content. Observation year 2023. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
14. 36UNVERIFIED, not opened: Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2024/1364 on the first phase of the establishment of a common Union rating scheme for data centres, 2024, cited from memory; the page returned no content. Observation year 2024. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
15. 24US General Services Administration (ed.), FedRAMP 20x (programme page; announced March 2025; phase 1 26 submissions; first pilot authorisations 6 March 2026; phase 3 wide-scale adoption active; new Rev5 submissions stop 11 June 2027, a future date that may change). FedRAMP, Washington. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
16. 30ETSI (ed.), Multi-access Edge Computing (technology page; industry specification group; news item of 31 October 2025 on Phase 4 specifications and a white paper; no counts on the page). European Telecommunications Standards Institute, Sophia Antipolis. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
17. 18Euronews (ed.), EU Cloud and AI Development Act gets mixed reception (news article of 22 June 2026; three pillars; aim to triple European data centre capacity in five to seven years; acceleration zones within six months; 12-month maximum permit procedure; four assurance levels; reactions; press report of the proposal, not the proposal text). Euronews, Lyon. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
18. 43UNVERIFIED, not opened: Infocomm Media Development Authority (ed.), Green Data Centre Roadmap, Singapore, cited from memory; the page returned no content and no figure is used. IMDA, Singapore. Observation year 2024. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
19. 12European Commission (ed.), Commission opens market investigations into cloud computing services under the Digital Markets Act (announcement of 18 November 2025; two investigations on whether AWS and Microsoft Azure should be designated and one on whether the DMA fits cloud). Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology, Brussels. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
20. 28Armbrust, M. et al., Above the Clouds: A Berkeley View of Cloud Computing, Technical Report UCB/EECS-2009-28, 10 February 2009 (report page and abstract). University of California, Berkeley. Observation year 2009. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
21. 34UNVERIFIED, not opened: Barroso, L.A., Clidaras, J. and Hölzle, U., The Datacenter as a Computer: Designing Warehouse-Scale Machines, third edition, Morgan and Claypool, 2018, cited from memory. Observation year 2018. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
22. 31UNVERIFIED, not opened: Masanet, E., Shehabi, A., Lei, N., Smith, S. and Koomey, J., Recalibrating global data centre energy-use estimates, Science 367, 984 to 986, 2020, cited from memory; the page returned an access error. Observation year 2020. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
23. 8Li, P., Yang, J., Islam, M.A. and Ren, S., Making AI Less Thirsty: Uncovering and Addressing the Secret Water Footprint of AI Models, arXiv:2304.03271, v1 April 2023, v5 March 2025 (abstract page; projection of 4.2 to 6.6 billion cubic metres of water withdrawal in 2027; accepted by Communications of the ACM per the page). arXiv, Ithaca. Observation year 2023. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
24. 32UNVERIFIED, not opened: Satyanarayanan, M., The emergence of edge computing, Computer 50(1), 30 to 39, 2017, cited from memory. Observation year 2017. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
25. 33UNVERIFIED, not opened: Shi, W., Cao, J., Zhang, Q., Li, Y. and Xu, L., Edge computing: vision and challenges, IEEE Internet of Things Journal 3(5), 637 to 646, 2016, cited from memory. Observation year 2016. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
26. 29Cloud Native Computing Foundation (ed.), CNCF Annual Survey 2024 (report page; tenth annual survey; 750 respondents in fall 2024; Kubernetes percentage not on the page). CNCF, San Francisco. Observation year 2024. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
27. 11UK Competition and Markets Authority (ed.), Cloud services market investigation (case page; final decision published 31 July 2025; recommends prioritising strategic market status investigations of Microsoft and AWS; board decision expected in the first quarter of 2026; the decision documents were not opened). Competition and Markets Authority, London. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
28. 1UNVERIFIED, not opened: IEA (ed.), Energy and AI (data centres about 415 TWh in 2024, about 1.5% of global electricity; about 945 TWh in the 2030 base case; about 1,200 TWh in 2035 with a range of 700 to 1,700), taken from search-result summaries; the report pages returned access errors. International Energy Agency, Paris. Observation year 2024. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
29. 2Shehabi, A. et al., 2024 United States Data Center Energy Usage Report, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, published 19 December 2024, DOI 10.71468/P1WC7Q (publication page; the page gives authors and a scenario range to 2028 but no figures; figures read in the DOE summary [3]). Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley. Observation year 2023. Accessed 2026-11-03. doi:10.71468/P1WC7Qback
30. 3US Department of Energy (ed.), DOE releases new report evaluating increase in electricity demand from data centres (20 December 2024; about 4.4% of US electricity in 2023; 6.7 to 12% projected for 2028; 58 TWh in 2014 and 176 TWh in 2023). US Department of Energy, Washington. Observation year 2023. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
31. 4Central Statistics Office (ed.), Data Centres Metered Electricity Consumption 2024 (statistical release of 10 June 2025; 22% of metered electricity in 2024, 21% in 2023; the GWh table was not in the content read). Central Statistics Office, Cork. Observation year 2024. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
32. 5Google (ed.), 2025 Environmental Report (PDF; fiscal year 2024; data centre electricity consumption up 27%, data centre energy emissions down 12%, fleet PUE 1.09 against a stated industry average of 1.56, water consumption up 28%; company-reported). Google, Mountain View. Observation year 2024. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
33. 6Microsoft (ed.), 2025 Environmental Data Fact Sheet (PDF; fiscal year ended 30 June 2024; Table 6 electricity consumed within the organisation 29,829,540 MWh in FY24 and 23,567,502 in FY23; Table 9 water consumption 5,807 ML in FY24 and 7,844 in FY23 after a new estimation approach; company-reported, section 1 reviewed by an external firm). Microsoft, Redmond. Observation year 2024. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
34. 7Amazon (ed.), 2024 Amazon Sustainability Report (PDF; AWS global PUE 1.15 in 2024 against a stated public cloud industry average of 1.25 and 1.63 for on-premises data centres, citing IDC; AWS water use effectiveness 0.15 L per kWh in 2024; company-reported). Amazon, Seattle. Observation year 2024. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
35. 9UNVERIFIED, not opened: Uptime Institute (ed.), Global Data Center Survey 2025 (average PUE 1.54; power the cause of 45% of outages), taken from search-result summaries; the survey page returned an access error. Uptime Institute, New York. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
36. 20Amazon Web Services (ed.), Summary of the Amazon DynamoDB Service Disruption in the Northern Virginia (US-EAST-1) Region (post-event summary; 19 October 11:48 PM to 20 October 2:20 PM PDT; latent race condition in the DNS management system for the regional endpoint; services and times listed; operator report). Amazon Web Services, Seattle. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
37. 21Google Cloud (ed.), Incident report for the Service Control outage of 12 June 2025 (status page; 10:51 to 18:18 PDT by the incident header; mini report gives different times; policy data with blank fields caused a null pointer crash in Service Control; operator report). Google, Mountain View. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
38. 22Cloudflare (ed.), Cloudflare outage on November 18, 2025 (blog post; start 11:20 UTC; core traffic largely restored 14:30 UTC; full recovery 17:06 UTC; Bot Management feature file doubled in size and exceeded a limit of 200 features; not caused by a cyber attack, per the operator). Cloudflare, San Francisco. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back

7.1Questions for the operational series

1. C-01

   Which public and critical services depend on one provider, region or control plane, and what happens when it fails?

   INI-XT08-DEP-01 · dependency map; first output: dependency register.

2. C-02

   What load do new facilities add to local grids, and how long do connections take?

   INI-XT08-ENE-02 · grid and load; first output: site and grid table.

3. C-03

   Can operator water and efficiency figures be put on a common basis?

   INI-XT08-WAT-03 · water and efficiency basis; first output: metric comparison.

4. C-04

   How many organisations have tested an exit or a switch between providers?

   INI-XT08-EXT-04 · exit and switching tests; first output: test evidence table.

5. C-05

   How large is the edge layer in energy, sites and devices?

   INI-XT08-EDG-05 · edge footprint; first output: edge inventory note.

6. C-06

   Which national rules on data location and sovereignty differ, and how?

   To be admitted in 2027; first output: rule overlay.

7. C-07

   What workforce exists for data centres, cloud operations and resilience engineering?

   To be admitted in 2027; first output: scoping note.

8. C-08

   Which readiness capabilities have been tested in real events, and which are only planned?

   Readiness capability register; first output: rung evidence for 15 functions.

7.2Portfolio proposed for the Q1 2027 alignment

Five initiatives and one Universe mission candidate are proposed for the 2027 cloud portfolio. They are programme objects: no partner, funder or member is attached to them in this edition.

7.3The pathway

The cloud edition reads national readiness chapters, the coupled sector reports on energy, cyber and digital systems and infrastructure, and the global edition through one governed evidence graph. At baseline the federation is designed; the global energy and lifeline editions are drafted. This page states what exists today and what comes next.

1. 01

   National readiness chapters

   cloud dependence and data centre load in each national edition

   IN PREPARATION · national baselines

2. 02

   Sector couplings

   GS-02 energy · GS-13 cyber and digital systems · SR-10 digital public infrastructure

   GS-02 DRAFTED · sector baselines

3. 03

   Technology system model

   facilities, grid, water, market, resilience, governance

   v0 SPECIFIED · v1 with federation evidence

4. 04

   Strategic links

   SR-02 lifeline systems · XT-06 semiconductors and compute

   PLANNED · strategic baselines

5. 05

   Universe

   annual proving environment

   CANDIDATE MISSION · mandate in 2027

6. 06

   XT-08 report

   this series

   BASELINE DRAFT · 2027 annual edition

7. 07

   Evidence and correction

   one graph, many projections

   OPEN · first correction cycle in 2027

7.4Universe 2027: evidence pack for the cloud candidate mission

1. 01

   Mandate

2. 02

   Core Build · 1 month

3. 03

   Action · 1 week

4. 04

   Evidence seal

5. 05

   Portfolio correction

6. 06

   Next mandate

Mission

ID

MSN-XT08-2027-01 · Shared control-plane fault Universe mission

Role spine

Leadership sponsor · Institutional anchor · Mission lead: drawn from national pathways

Receiving actors

to be identified with the mandate

7.5Handoffs and routing

Where the baseline’s findings go next. A handoff routes a finding for awareness, review or work; it transfers no authority.

7.6Feeds and signal register

Escalation routes

• none · keep monitoring
• research question
• project
• risk object
• annual publication
• signal report

Notes

Numbers are the edition’s reference numbers, so a note reads the same in every chapter. The full list, with every source and its licence, is in Annex C. Annex C, references

1. 10Synergy Research Group (ed.), Q2 Cloud Market Passes $143 Billion; Highest Growth Rate in Eight Years (release of 30 July 2026; Amazon 28%, Microsoft 20%, Google 15%; quarterly revenue USD 143.4 billion; growth 43%; definition IaaS, PaaS and hosted private cloud; industry analyst). Synergy Research Group, Reno. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
2. 11UK Competition and Markets Authority (ed.), Cloud services market investigation (case page; final decision published 31 July 2025; recommends prioritising strategic market status investigations of Microsoft and AWS; board decision expected in the first quarter of 2026; the decision documents were not opened). Competition and Markets Authority, London. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
3. 12European Commission (ed.), Commission opens market investigations into cloud computing services under the Digital Markets Act (announcement of 18 November 2025; two investigations on whether AWS and Microsoft Azure should be designated and one on whether the DMA fits cloud). Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology, Brussels. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
4. 20Amazon Web Services (ed.), Summary of the Amazon DynamoDB Service Disruption in the Northern Virginia (US-EAST-1) Region (post-event summary; 19 October 11:48 PM to 20 October 2:20 PM PDT; latent race condition in the DNS management system for the regional endpoint; services and times listed; operator report). Amazon Web Services, Seattle. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
5. 21Google Cloud (ed.), Incident report for the Service Control outage of 12 June 2025 (status page; 10:51 to 18:18 PDT by the incident header; mini report gives different times; policy data with blank fields caused a null pointer crash in Service Control; operator report). Google, Mountain View. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
6. 22Cloudflare (ed.), Cloudflare outage on November 18, 2025 (blog post; start 11:20 UTC; core traffic largely restored 14:30 UTC; full recovery 17:06 UTC; Bot Management feature file doubled in size and exceeded a limit of 200 features; not caused by a cyber attack, per the operator). Cloudflare, San Francisco. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back

8.1Cloud, edge and distributed platforms

Cloud services run on a small number of very large platforms, with an edge layer that is defined in specifications but not counted. Evidence is strongest for market revenue and weakest for the edge.

Related editions

• GLB Global Systems
• GS-02 Energy
• GS-13 Cyber and Digital Systems
• SR-10 Digital Public Infrastructure and Systemic Cyber Risk
• XT-06 Advanced Semiconductors and AI Compute
• XT-07 HPC and Advanced Computing

8.2Electricity, cooling and water

Data centres are a visible and growing share of electricity in some systems. Operators report efficient fleets and water figures, on methods that differ.

Related editions

• GLB Global Systems
• GS-02 Energy
• GS-13 Cyber and Digital Systems
• SR-10 Digital Public Infrastructure and Systemic Cyber Risk
• XT-06 Advanced Semiconductors and AI Compute
• XT-07 HPC and Advanced Computing

8.3Grid, hardware and siting

Growth depends on grid connection, permits and hardware. Public evidence on connection queues and hardware supply is thin in the sources read here.

Related editions

• GLB Global Systems
• GS-02 Energy
• GS-13 Cyber and Digital Systems
• SR-10 Digital Public Infrastructure and Systemic Cyber Risk
• XT-06 Advanced Semiconductors and AI Compute
• XT-07 HPC and Advanced Computing

8.4Economy, market structure and workforce

The cloud market is concentrated and growing fast, and regulators now review it. Workforce numbers are the thin part of the evidence.

Related editions

• GLB Global Systems
• GS-02 Energy
• GS-13 Cyber and Digital Systems
• SR-10 Digital Public Infrastructure and Systemic Cyber Risk
• XT-06 Advanced Semiconductors and AI Compute
• XT-07 HPC and Advanced Computing

8.5Resilience, security and governance watch

The nearest risk of shared platforms is a fault that spreads. Rules on operational resilience, authorisation, switching and sovereignty are being set at the same time.

Related editions

• GLB Global Systems
• GS-02 Energy
• GS-13 Cyber and Digital Systems
• SR-10 Digital Public Infrastructure and Systemic Cyber Risk
• XT-06 Advanced Semiconductors and AI Compute
• XT-07 HPC and Advanced Computing

Notes

Numbers are the edition’s reference numbers, so a note reads the same in every chapter. The full list, with every source and its licence, is in Annex C. Annex C, references

1. 10Synergy Research Group (ed.), Q2 Cloud Market Passes $143 Billion; Highest Growth Rate in Eight Years (release of 30 July 2026; Amazon 28%, Microsoft 20%, Google 15%; quarterly revenue USD 143.4 billion; growth 43%; definition IaaS, PaaS and hosted private cloud; industry analyst). Synergy Research Group, Reno. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
2. 29Cloud Native Computing Foundation (ed.), CNCF Annual Survey 2024 (report page; tenth annual survey; 750 respondents in fall 2024; Kubernetes percentage not on the page). CNCF, San Francisco. Observation year 2024. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
3. 25NIST (ed.), The NIST Definition of Cloud Computing, NIST SP 800-145 (publication page; September 2011; five essential characteristics, three service models and four deployment models). National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg. Observation year 2011. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
4. 26NIST (ed.), Cloud Computing Synopsis and Recommendations, NIST SP 800-146 (publication page; May 2012). National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg. Observation year 2012. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
5. 27NIST (ed.), NIST Cloud Computing Reference Architecture, NIST SP 500-292 (publication page; 8 September 2011). National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg. Observation year 2011. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
6. 30ETSI (ed.), Multi-access Edge Computing (technology page; industry specification group; news item of 31 October 2025 on Phase 4 specifications and a white paper; no counts on the page). European Telecommunications Standards Institute, Sophia Antipolis. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
7. 32UNVERIFIED, not opened: Satyanarayanan, M., The emergence of edge computing, Computer 50(1), 30 to 39, 2017, cited from memory. Observation year 2017. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
8. 33UNVERIFIED, not opened: Shi, W., Cao, J., Zhang, Q., Li, Y. and Xu, L., Edge computing: vision and challenges, IEEE Internet of Things Journal 3(5), 637 to 646, 2016, cited from memory. Observation year 2016. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
9. 1UNVERIFIED, not opened: IEA (ed.), Energy and AI (data centres about 415 TWh in 2024, about 1.5% of global electricity; about 945 TWh in the 2030 base case; about 1,200 TWh in 2035 with a range of 700 to 1,700), taken from search-result summaries; the report pages returned access errors. International Energy Agency, Paris. Observation year 2024. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
10. 3US Department of Energy (ed.), DOE releases new report evaluating increase in electricity demand from data centres (20 December 2024; about 4.4% of US electricity in 2023; 6.7 to 12% projected for 2028; 58 TWh in 2014 and 176 TWh in 2023). US Department of Energy, Washington. Observation year 2023. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
11. 4Central Statistics Office (ed.), Data Centres Metered Electricity Consumption 2024 (statistical release of 10 June 2025; 22% of metered electricity in 2024, 21% in 2023; the GWh table was not in the content read). Central Statistics Office, Cork. Observation year 2024. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
12. 5Google (ed.), 2025 Environmental Report (PDF; fiscal year 2024; data centre electricity consumption up 27%, data centre energy emissions down 12%, fleet PUE 1.09 against a stated industry average of 1.56, water consumption up 28%; company-reported). Google, Mountain View. Observation year 2024. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
13. 7Amazon (ed.), 2024 Amazon Sustainability Report (PDF; AWS global PUE 1.15 in 2024 against a stated public cloud industry average of 1.25 and 1.63 for on-premises data centres, citing IDC; AWS water use effectiveness 0.15 L per kWh in 2024; company-reported). Amazon, Seattle. Observation year 2024. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
14. 9UNVERIFIED, not opened: Uptime Institute (ed.), Global Data Center Survey 2025 (average PUE 1.54; power the cause of 45% of outages), taken from search-result summaries; the survey page returned an access error. Uptime Institute, New York. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
15. 6Microsoft (ed.), 2025 Environmental Data Fact Sheet (PDF; fiscal year ended 30 June 2024; Table 6 electricity consumed within the organisation 29,829,540 MWh in FY24 and 23,567,502 in FY23; Table 9 water consumption 5,807 ML in FY24 and 7,844 in FY23 after a new estimation approach; company-reported, section 1 reviewed by an external firm). Microsoft, Redmond. Observation year 2024. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
16. 8Li, P., Yang, J., Islam, M.A. and Ren, S., Making AI Less Thirsty: Uncovering and Addressing the Secret Water Footprint of AI Models, arXiv:2304.03271, v1 April 2023, v5 March 2025 (abstract page; projection of 4.2 to 6.6 billion cubic metres of water withdrawal in 2027; accepted by Communications of the ACM per the page). arXiv, Ithaca. Observation year 2023. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
17. 18Euronews (ed.), EU Cloud and AI Development Act gets mixed reception (news article of 22 June 2026; three pillars; aim to triple European data centre capacity in five to seven years; acceleration zones within six months; 12-month maximum permit procedure; four assurance levels; reactions; press report of the proposal, not the proposal text). Euronews, Lyon. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
18. 43UNVERIFIED, not opened: Infocomm Media Development Authority (ed.), Green Data Centre Roadmap, Singapore, cited from memory; the page returned no content and no figure is used. IMDA, Singapore. Observation year 2024. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
19. 16European Commission (ed.), Data Act explained (policy page; switching charges including data egress charges removed from 12 January 2027; transitional period 11 January 2024 to 12 January 2027; notice period not on the page). Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology, Brussels. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
20. 23Amazon Web Services (ed.), Opening the AWS European Sovereign Cloud (blog announcement of 14 January 2026; Brandenburg region; investment of EUR 7.8 billion stated; vendor announcement, weak evidence). Amazon Web Services, Seattle. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
21. 11UK Competition and Markets Authority (ed.), Cloud services market investigation (case page; final decision published 31 July 2025; recommends prioritising strategic market status investigations of Microsoft and AWS; board decision expected in the first quarter of 2026; the decision documents were not opened). Competition and Markets Authority, London. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
22. 12European Commission (ed.), Commission opens market investigations into cloud computing services under the Digital Markets Act (announcement of 18 November 2025; two investigations on whether AWS and Microsoft Azure should be designated and one on whether the DMA fits cloud). Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology, Brussels. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
23. 13The Register (ed.), Brussels eyes AWS, Azure for gatekeeper tag in cloud clampdown (news article of 18 November 2025; possible obligations and fines up to 10% of worldwide turnover; trade press, secondary). Situation Publishing, London. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
24. 28Armbrust, M. et al., Above the Clouds: A Berkeley View of Cloud Computing, Technical Report UCB/EECS-2009-28, 10 February 2009 (report page and abstract). University of California, Berkeley. Observation year 2009. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
25. 20Amazon Web Services (ed.), Summary of the Amazon DynamoDB Service Disruption in the Northern Virginia (US-EAST-1) Region (post-event summary; 19 October 11:48 PM to 20 October 2:20 PM PDT; latent race condition in the DNS management system for the regional endpoint; services and times listed; operator report). Amazon Web Services, Seattle. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
26. 21Google Cloud (ed.), Incident report for the Service Control outage of 12 June 2025 (status page; 10:51 to 18:18 PDT by the incident header; mini report gives different times; policy data with blank fields caused a null pointer crash in Service Control; operator report). Google, Mountain View. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
27. 22Cloudflare (ed.), Cloudflare outage on November 18, 2025 (blog post; start 11:20 UTC; core traffic largely restored 14:30 UTC; full recovery 17:06 UTC; Bot Management feature file doubled in size and exceeded a limit of 200 features; not caused by a cyber attack, per the operator). Cloudflare, San Francisco. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
28. 17European Securities and Markets Authority (ed.), Digital Operational Resilience Act (page; applies from 17 January 2025; lists materials on critical ICT third-party provider designation; no designations on the page). ESMA, Paris. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
29. 38UNVERIFIED, not opened: Regulation (EU) 2022/2554 on digital operational resilience for the financial sector (DORA), Official Journal of the European Union, 2022, cited from memory; the ESMA page [17] was read instead. Observation year 2022. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
30. 24US General Services Administration (ed.), FedRAMP 20x (programme page; announced March 2025; phase 1 26 submissions; first pilot authorisations 6 March 2026; phase 3 wide-scale adoption active; new Rev5 submissions stop 11 June 2027, a future date that may change). FedRAMP, Washington. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03.back

A.1Methods

The global baseline uses published values and four simple derivations. Each is shown in full so that any reader can reproduce it.

A.2Model card, Cloud System Model v0

Model ID

MDL-XT08-CLOUD · v0.1

Purpose

represent cloud, edge and distributed computing as infrastructure coupled to electricity, cooling water, finance, workforce and cyber resilience

Family

graph-based system of systems

Inputs

the cited sources of this edition; no proprietary data

Method

expert-specified coupling strengths (STRONG · MODERATE · WEAK) from assessments and analogue events

Validation

none yet, first validation against federation evidence in 2027

Uncertainty

qualitative; strengths are hypotheses, not measurements

Domain of validity

global scale; not for asset-, site- or country-level use

Reproducibility

strength table and sources published in this edition

A.3The baseline evidence cut

Every Nexus edition is published from a frozen evidence cut. The global baseline cut is documentary: it pins the exact edition of every source cited. Federation cuts begin with the first national Foundry cuts in 2027.

Cut ID

DC-XTECH-CLOUD-GLOBAL-2026-B0

Type

baseline documentary cut

Resolution policy

pinned · as of 30 September 2026

Sources pinned

43 cited sources, each at the edition and access date in the references

Model runs

none at baseline, analytical values are stated with their method

Digest

computed at freeze and recorded in the publication record

Supersedes

nothing, first cut of the series

Superseded by

the 2027 cloud annual cut

Lineage

1. 01

   source edition

2. 02

   pinned citation

3. 03

   finding

4. 04

   page

5. 05

   publication record

A.4Evidence age and coverage

A 2026 global edition rests on evidence observed in many different years. This page shows each time base, so that no single year label hides older evidence.

A.5Evidence cards, two anchor sources

Evidence cards to follow in 2027

• Synergy¹⁰: provider definitions and method
• IEA¹: report text and scenarios
• European Commission¹⁸: proposal text
• Operator reports⁵⁶⁷: boundaries for PUE and water

A.6Publication acceptance record

Editorial self-check at evidence close. Every applicable item carries a disposition; the remaining items are review, approval and deposit.

A.7Status words

A.8How the edition is made, released and corrected

Every edition is built from a sealed evidence cut, reviewed under three keys, signed and deposited before any site shows it as published; corrections go to Nexus Standards as change proposals and feed the next cut.

A teaching model of the process, not a forecast and not a record of any run; dates and counts on this page come from the programme record. Sources: Reports governance at GCRI Canada (2026); Zenodo, repository of record for Reports deposits (2026).

Lifecycle, one state at a time: Draft, Computed, Evidence bound, Reviewed, Approved for release, Published, Corrected, Superseded. This edition is a draft.

A.9Glossary and abbreviations

A.10Technical annex

A.1 · indicator definition: power usage effectiveness

Construct

ratio of total facility energy to the energy used by IT equipment

Unit

ratio, 1.0 or higher

Method

continuous metering at the facility, as described by one operator⁵

Source

operator environmental reports⁵⁷; definition in ISO/IEC 30134-2⁴¹

Uncertainty

boundaries differ by operator; reported industry averages range from 1.25 to 1.56

Known limits

says nothing about water, carbon or the useful work done

Notes

Numbers are the edition’s reference numbers, so a note reads the same in every chapter. The full list, with every source and its licence, is in Annex C. Annex C, references

1. 19European Commission (ed.), Energy Efficiency Directive (policy page; states a data centre energy efficiency package planned for the third quarter of 2026 and links to reporting of data centre energy consumption; no threshold or dates on the page). Directorate-General for Energy, Brussels. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
2. 35UNVERIFIED, not opened: Directive (EU) 2023/1791 on energy efficiency, Article 12 on data centre reporting, Official Journal of the European Union, 2023, cited from memory; the page returned no content. Observation year 2023. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
3. 1UNVERIFIED, not opened: IEA (ed.), Energy and AI (data centres about 415 TWh in 2024, about 1.5% of global electricity; about 945 TWh in the 2030 base case; about 1,200 TWh in 2035 with a range of 700 to 1,700), taken from search-result summaries; the report pages returned access errors. International Energy Agency, Paris. Observation year 2024. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
4. 9UNVERIFIED, not opened: Uptime Institute (ed.), Global Data Center Survey 2025 (average PUE 1.54; power the cause of 45% of outages), taken from search-result summaries; the survey page returned an access error. Uptime Institute, New York. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
5. 11UK Competition and Markets Authority (ed.), Cloud services market investigation (case page; final decision published 31 July 2025; recommends prioritising strategic market status investigations of Microsoft and AWS; board decision expected in the first quarter of 2026; the decision documents were not opened). Competition and Markets Authority, London. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
6. 39UNVERIFIED, not opened: UK Competition and Markets Authority (ed.), Cloud services market investigation final decision report, 31 July 2025 and 1 August 2025, cited from the case page [11]; the report documents were not opened. Competition and Markets Authority, London. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
7. 12European Commission (ed.), Commission opens market investigations into cloud computing services under the Digital Markets Act (announcement of 18 November 2025; two investigations on whether AWS and Microsoft Azure should be designated and one on whether the DMA fits cloud). Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology, Brussels. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
8. 14UNVERIFIED, not opened: trade press reports of mid-2026 that the Commission informed Amazon and Microsoft of a preliminary view that they should be designated as gatekeepers for cloud, taken from search-result summaries; the one article fetched returned an access error. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
9. 18Euronews (ed.), EU Cloud and AI Development Act gets mixed reception (news article of 22 June 2026; three pillars; aim to triple European data centre capacity in five to seven years; acceleration zones within six months; 12-month maximum permit procedure; four assurance levels; reactions; press report of the proposal, not the proposal text). Euronews, Lyon. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
10. 17European Securities and Markets Authority (ed.), Digital Operational Resilience Act (page; applies from 17 January 2025; lists materials on critical ICT third-party provider designation; no designations on the page). ESMA, Paris. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
11. 38UNVERIFIED, not opened: Regulation (EU) 2022/2554 on digital operational resilience for the financial sector (DORA), Official Journal of the European Union, 2022, cited from memory; the ESMA page [17] was read instead. Observation year 2022. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
12. 20Amazon Web Services (ed.), Summary of the Amazon DynamoDB Service Disruption in the Northern Virginia (US-EAST-1) Region (post-event summary; 19 October 11:48 PM to 20 October 2:20 PM PDT; latent race condition in the DNS management system for the regional endpoint; services and times listed; operator report). Amazon Web Services, Seattle. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
13. 21Google Cloud (ed.), Incident report for the Service Control outage of 12 June 2025 (status page; 10:51 to 18:18 PDT by the incident header; mini report gives different times; policy data with blank fields caused a null pointer crash in Service Control; operator report). Google, Mountain View. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
14. 22Cloudflare (ed.), Cloudflare outage on November 18, 2025 (blog post; start 11:20 UTC; core traffic largely restored 14:30 UTC; full recovery 17:06 UTC; Bot Management feature file doubled in size and exceeded a limit of 200 features; not caused by a cyber attack, per the operator). Cloudflare, San Francisco. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
15. 30ETSI (ed.), Multi-access Edge Computing (technology page; industry specification group; news item of 31 October 2025 on Phase 4 specifications and a white paper; no counts on the page). European Telecommunications Standards Institute, Sophia Antipolis. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
16. 2Shehabi, A. et al., 2024 United States Data Center Energy Usage Report, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, published 19 December 2024, DOI 10.71468/P1WC7Q (publication page; the page gives authors and a scenario range to 2028 but no figures; figures read in the DOE summary [3]). Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley. Observation year 2023. Accessed 2026-11-03. doi:10.71468/P1WC7Qback
17. 3US Department of Energy (ed.), DOE releases new report evaluating increase in electricity demand from data centres (20 December 2024; about 4.4% of US electricity in 2023; 6.7 to 12% projected for 2028; 58 TWh in 2014 and 176 TWh in 2023). US Department of Energy, Washington. Observation year 2023. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
18. 10Synergy Research Group (ed.), Q2 Cloud Market Passes $143 Billion; Highest Growth Rate in Eight Years (release of 30 July 2026; Amazon 28%, Microsoft 20%, Google 15%; quarterly revenue USD 143.4 billion; growth 43%; definition IaaS, PaaS and hosted private cloud; industry analyst). Synergy Research Group, Reno. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
19. 5Google (ed.), 2025 Environmental Report (PDF; fiscal year 2024; data centre electricity consumption up 27%, data centre energy emissions down 12%, fleet PUE 1.09 against a stated industry average of 1.56, water consumption up 28%; company-reported). Google, Mountain View. Observation year 2024. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
20. 6Microsoft (ed.), 2025 Environmental Data Fact Sheet (PDF; fiscal year ended 30 June 2024; Table 6 electricity consumed within the organisation 29,829,540 MWh in FY24 and 23,567,502 in FY23; Table 9 water consumption 5,807 ML in FY24 and 7,844 in FY23 after a new estimation approach; company-reported, section 1 reviewed by an external firm). Microsoft, Redmond. Observation year 2024. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
21. 7Amazon (ed.), 2024 Amazon Sustainability Report (PDF; AWS global PUE 1.15 in 2024 against a stated public cloud industry average of 1.25 and 1.63 for on-premises data centres, citing IDC; AWS water use effectiveness 0.15 L per kWh in 2024; company-reported). Amazon, Seattle. Observation year 2024. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
22. 41UNVERIFIED, not opened: ISO and IEC (eds.), ISO/IEC 30134-2 Information technology, data centres, key performance indicators, part 2, power usage effectiveness (PUE), cited from memory. International Organization for Standardization, Geneva. Observation year 2016. Accessed 2026-11-03.back

B.1The indicator set

B.2Global source register

The governed source set behind this edition. Each source keeps its authority, coverage, cadence and role; categories describe origin, not truth.

Domains bound by the register

• ENE
• INF
• FIN
• GOV
• WAT
• DAT
• AIC
• CLI
• TRD
• HLT

B.3Regional reading, cloud across ten clusters

Regional plates follow with the regional editions. This page gives the regional reading of cloud and distributed computing in table form and ranks no region.

B.4Cluster card: data centres in a national grid, Ireland

• grid
• electricity share
• permits
• efficiency rules

Systems in view

data centres, national grid, cloud regions

Defining events

data centres at 22% of metered electricity in 2024⁴

Couplings

ENE → INF grid share; INF → ENE load

Capability evidence

EU reporting rules and a planned efficiency package¹⁹

Gaps

site-level load; connection queues; water use

Agenda items

C-02 · C-03

B.5How countries appear in the cloud edition

Countries enter the cloud edition through the readiness chapters of their own national editions, on one card grammar. They are read against peer distributions and thresholds, never ranked.

Editions in the 2026 Baseline programme

How to read a country card

• Each system is shown against the distribution of its peers, with thresholds where they exist
• Couplings and risk objects come from the country’s own national edition
• Capability rungs record evidence, not a judgement of institutions
• Evidence age is printed, so older national data are visible as such

B.6Licences

B.7Formats and provenance

Provenance

Edition pack

The edition’s content pack (JSON), from which the print and web editions are built

Evidence cut

DC-XTECH-CLOUD-GLOBAL-2026-B0, closed 30 September 2026

Reproducibility

sourced values cited; analytical values reproducible from stated parameters

Self-check

14 of 23 at evidence close; a fail on any item blocks release

Review

five passes scheduled before release (in Annex C)

Publisher of record

GCRI for the Nexus Consortium

Corrections

Registry correction pathway; upheld corrections are published as notices with a new version

Notes

Numbers are the edition’s reference numbers, so a note reads the same in every chapter. The full list, with every source and its licence, is in Annex C. Annex C, references

1. 1UNVERIFIED, not opened: IEA (ed.), Energy and AI (data centres about 415 TWh in 2024, about 1.5% of global electricity; about 945 TWh in the 2030 base case; about 1,200 TWh in 2035 with a range of 700 to 1,700), taken from search-result summaries; the report pages returned access errors. International Energy Agency, Paris. Observation year 2024. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
2. 2Shehabi, A. et al., 2024 United States Data Center Energy Usage Report, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, published 19 December 2024, DOI 10.71468/P1WC7Q (publication page; the page gives authors and a scenario range to 2028 but no figures; figures read in the DOE summary [3]). Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley. Observation year 2023. Accessed 2026-11-03. doi:10.71468/P1WC7Qback
3. 3US Department of Energy (ed.), DOE releases new report evaluating increase in electricity demand from data centres (20 December 2024; about 4.4% of US electricity in 2023; 6.7 to 12% projected for 2028; 58 TWh in 2014 and 176 TWh in 2023). US Department of Energy, Washington. Observation year 2023. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
4. 4Central Statistics Office (ed.), Data Centres Metered Electricity Consumption 2024 (statistical release of 10 June 2025; 22% of metered electricity in 2024, 21% in 2023; the GWh table was not in the content read). Central Statistics Office, Cork. Observation year 2024. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
5. 5Google (ed.), 2025 Environmental Report (PDF; fiscal year 2024; data centre electricity consumption up 27%, data centre energy emissions down 12%, fleet PUE 1.09 against a stated industry average of 1.56, water consumption up 28%; company-reported). Google, Mountain View. Observation year 2024. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
6. 7Amazon (ed.), 2024 Amazon Sustainability Report (PDF; AWS global PUE 1.15 in 2024 against a stated public cloud industry average of 1.25 and 1.63 for on-premises data centres, citing IDC; AWS water use effectiveness 0.15 L per kWh in 2024; company-reported). Amazon, Seattle. Observation year 2024. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
7. 6Microsoft (ed.), 2025 Environmental Data Fact Sheet (PDF; fiscal year ended 30 June 2024; Table 6 electricity consumed within the organisation 29,829,540 MWh in FY24 and 23,567,502 in FY23; Table 9 water consumption 5,807 ML in FY24 and 7,844 in FY23 after a new estimation approach; company-reported, section 1 reviewed by an external firm). Microsoft, Redmond. Observation year 2024. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
8. 10Synergy Research Group (ed.), Q2 Cloud Market Passes $143 Billion; Highest Growth Rate in Eight Years (release of 30 July 2026; Amazon 28%, Microsoft 20%, Google 15%; quarterly revenue USD 143.4 billion; growth 43%; definition IaaS, PaaS and hosted private cloud; industry analyst). Synergy Research Group, Reno. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
9. 20Amazon Web Services (ed.), Summary of the Amazon DynamoDB Service Disruption in the Northern Virginia (US-EAST-1) Region (post-event summary; 19 October 11:48 PM to 20 October 2:20 PM PDT; latent race condition in the DNS management system for the regional endpoint; services and times listed; operator report). Amazon Web Services, Seattle. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
10. 11UK Competition and Markets Authority (ed.), Cloud services market investigation (case page; final decision published 31 July 2025; recommends prioritising strategic market status investigations of Microsoft and AWS; board decision expected in the first quarter of 2026; the decision documents were not opened). Competition and Markets Authority, London. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
11. 21Google Cloud (ed.), Incident report for the Service Control outage of 12 June 2025 (status page; 10:51 to 18:18 PDT by the incident header; mini report gives different times; policy data with blank fields caused a null pointer crash in Service Control; operator report). Google, Mountain View. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
12. 22Cloudflare (ed.), Cloudflare outage on November 18, 2025 (blog post; start 11:20 UTC; core traffic largely restored 14:30 UTC; full recovery 17:06 UTC; Bot Management feature file doubled in size and exceeded a limit of 200 features; not caused by a cyber attack, per the operator). Cloudflare, San Francisco. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
13. 15European Commission (ed.), Data Act (policy page; applicable from 12 September 2025; entered into force in January 2024). Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology, Brussels. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
14. 16European Commission (ed.), Data Act explained (policy page; switching charges including data egress charges removed from 12 January 2027; transitional period 11 January 2024 to 12 January 2027; notice period not on the page). Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology, Brussels. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
15. 24US General Services Administration (ed.), FedRAMP 20x (programme page; announced March 2025; phase 1 26 submissions; first pilot authorisations 6 March 2026; phase 3 wide-scale adoption active; new Rev5 submissions stop 11 June 2027, a future date that may change). FedRAMP, Washington. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
16. 12European Commission (ed.), Commission opens market investigations into cloud computing services under the Digital Markets Act (announcement of 18 November 2025; two investigations on whether AWS and Microsoft Azure should be designated and one on whether the DMA fits cloud). Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology, Brussels. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
17. 18Euronews (ed.), EU Cloud and AI Development Act gets mixed reception (news article of 22 June 2026; three pillars; aim to triple European data centre capacity in five to seven years; acceleration zones within six months; 12-month maximum permit procedure; four assurance levels; reactions; press report of the proposal, not the proposal text). Euronews, Lyon. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
18. 43UNVERIFIED, not opened: Infocomm Media Development Authority (ed.), Green Data Centre Roadmap, Singapore, cited from memory; the page returned no content and no figure is used. IMDA, Singapore. Observation year 2024. Accessed 2026-11-03.back
19. 19European Commission (ed.), Energy Efficiency Directive (policy page; states a data centre energy efficiency package planned for the third quarter of 2026 and links to reporting of data centre energy consumption; no threshold or dates on the page). Directorate-General for Energy, Brussels. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03.back

C.143 sources

NR-CIT-1, editor first. A DOI is linked where the source has one; Nexus records carry a UNI once the catalogue allocates it (NS-1).

1. 1UNVERIFIED, not opened: IEA (ed.), Energy and AI (data centres about 415 TWh in 2024, about 1.5% of global electricity; about 945 TWh in the 2030 base case; about 1,200 TWh in 2035 with a range of 700 to 1,700), taken from search-result summaries; the report pages returned access errors. International Energy Agency, Paris. Observation year 2024. Accessed 2026-11-03. Cited in the summary, chapter 1, chapter 2, chapter 3, chapter 4, chapter 6, chapter 8
2. 2Shehabi, A. et al., 2024 United States Data Center Energy Usage Report, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, published 19 December 2024, DOI 10.71468/P1WC7Q (publication page; the page gives authors and a scenario range to 2028 but no figures; figures read in the DOE summary [3]). Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley. Observation year 2023. Accessed 2026-11-03. doi:10.71468/P1WC7Q Cited in the summary, chapter 2, chapter 3, chapter 4, chapter 6
3. 3US Department of Energy (ed.), DOE releases new report evaluating increase in electricity demand from data centres (20 December 2024; about 4.4% of US electricity in 2023; 6.7 to 12% projected for 2028; 58 TWh in 2014 and 176 TWh in 2023). US Department of Energy, Washington. Observation year 2023. Accessed 2026-11-03. Cited in the summary, chapter 1, chapter 2, chapter 3, chapter 6, chapter 8
4. 4Central Statistics Office (ed.), Data Centres Metered Electricity Consumption 2024 (statistical release of 10 June 2025; 22% of metered electricity in 2024, 21% in 2023; the GWh table was not in the content read). Central Statistics Office, Cork. Observation year 2024. Accessed 2026-11-03. Cited in the summary, chapter 1, chapter 2, chapter 3, chapter 4, chapter 6, chapter 8
5. 5Google (ed.), 2025 Environmental Report (PDF; fiscal year 2024; data centre electricity consumption up 27%, data centre energy emissions down 12%, fleet PUE 1.09 against a stated industry average of 1.56, water consumption up 28%; company-reported). Google, Mountain View. Observation year 2024. Accessed 2026-11-03. Cited in the summary, chapter 1, chapter 2, chapter 3, chapter 4, chapter 6, chapter 8
6. 6Microsoft (ed.), 2025 Environmental Data Fact Sheet (PDF; fiscal year ended 30 June 2024; Table 6 electricity consumed within the organisation 29,829,540 MWh in FY24 and 23,567,502 in FY23; Table 9 water consumption 5,807 ML in FY24 and 7,844 in FY23 after a new estimation approach; company-reported, section 1 reviewed by an external firm). Microsoft, Redmond. Observation year 2024. Accessed 2026-11-03. Cited in the summary, chapter 1, chapter 2, chapter 3, chapter 4, chapter 6, chapter 8
7. 7Amazon (ed.), 2024 Amazon Sustainability Report (PDF; AWS global PUE 1.15 in 2024 against a stated public cloud industry average of 1.25 and 1.63 for on-premises data centres, citing IDC; AWS water use effectiveness 0.15 L per kWh in 2024; company-reported). Amazon, Seattle. Observation year 2024. Accessed 2026-11-03. Cited in the summary, chapter 1, chapter 2, chapter 4, chapter 6, chapter 8
8. 8Li, P., Yang, J., Islam, M.A. and Ren, S., Making AI Less Thirsty: Uncovering and Addressing the Secret Water Footprint of AI Models, arXiv:2304.03271, v1 April 2023, v5 March 2025 (abstract page; projection of 4.2 to 6.6 billion cubic metres of water withdrawal in 2027; accepted by Communications of the ACM per the page). arXiv, Ithaca. Observation year 2023. Accessed 2026-11-03. Cited in the summary, chapter 2, chapter 3, chapter 4, chapter 6, chapter 8
9. 9UNVERIFIED, not opened: Uptime Institute (ed.), Global Data Center Survey 2025 (average PUE 1.54; power the cause of 45% of outages), taken from search-result summaries; the survey page returned an access error. Uptime Institute, New York. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03. Cited in chapter 2, chapter 6, chapter 8
10. 10Synergy Research Group (ed.), Q2 Cloud Market Passes $143 Billion; Highest Growth Rate in Eight Years (release of 30 July 2026; Amazon 28%, Microsoft 20%, Google 15%; quarterly revenue USD 143.4 billion; growth 43%; definition IaaS, PaaS and hosted private cloud; industry analyst). Synergy Research Group, Reno. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03. Cited in the summary, chapter 1, chapter 2, chapter 3, chapter 4, chapter 6, chapter 7, chapter 8
11. 11UK Competition and Markets Authority (ed.), Cloud services market investigation (case page; final decision published 31 July 2025; recommends prioritising strategic market status investigations of Microsoft and AWS; board decision expected in the first quarter of 2026; the decision documents were not opened). Competition and Markets Authority, London. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03. Cited in the summary, chapter 1, chapter 2, chapter 3, chapter 4, chapter 6, chapter 7, chapter 8
12. 12European Commission (ed.), Commission opens market investigations into cloud computing services under the Digital Markets Act (announcement of 18 November 2025; two investigations on whether AWS and Microsoft Azure should be designated and one on whether the DMA fits cloud). Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology, Brussels. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03. Cited in the summary, chapter 1, chapter 2, chapter 3, chapter 4, chapter 6, chapter 7, chapter 8
13. 13The Register (ed.), Brussels eyes AWS, Azure for gatekeeper tag in cloud clampdown (news article of 18 November 2025; possible obligations and fines up to 10% of worldwide turnover; trade press, secondary). Situation Publishing, London. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03. Cited in chapter 2, chapter 8
14. 14UNVERIFIED, not opened: trade press reports of mid-2026 that the Commission informed Amazon and Microsoft of a preliminary view that they should be designated as gatekeepers for cloud, taken from search-result summaries; the one article fetched returned an access error. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03. Cited in chapter 2
15. 15European Commission (ed.), Data Act (policy page; applicable from 12 September 2025; entered into force in January 2024). Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology, Brussels. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03. Cited in chapter 2, chapter 6
16. 16European Commission (ed.), Data Act explained (policy page; switching charges including data egress charges removed from 12 January 2027; transitional period 11 January 2024 to 12 January 2027; notice period not on the page). Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology, Brussels. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03. Cited in the summary, chapter 1, chapter 2, chapter 3, chapter 4, chapter 6, chapter 8
17. 17European Securities and Markets Authority (ed.), Digital Operational Resilience Act (page; applies from 17 January 2025; lists materials on critical ICT third-party provider designation; no designations on the page). ESMA, Paris. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03. Cited in chapter 4, chapter 6, chapter 8
18. 18Euronews (ed.), EU Cloud and AI Development Act gets mixed reception (news article of 22 June 2026; three pillars; aim to triple European data centre capacity in five to seven years; acceleration zones within six months; 12-month maximum permit procedure; four assurance levels; reactions; press report of the proposal, not the proposal text). Euronews, Lyon. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03. Cited in chapter 1, chapter 3, chapter 4, chapter 6, chapter 8
19. 19European Commission (ed.), Energy Efficiency Directive (policy page; states a data centre energy efficiency package planned for the third quarter of 2026 and links to reporting of data centre energy consumption; no threshold or dates on the page). Directorate-General for Energy, Brussels. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03. Cited in chapter 4, chapter 6
20. 20Amazon Web Services (ed.), Summary of the Amazon DynamoDB Service Disruption in the Northern Virginia (US-EAST-1) Region (post-event summary; 19 October 11:48 PM to 20 October 2:20 PM PDT; latent race condition in the DNS management system for the regional endpoint; services and times listed; operator report). Amazon Web Services, Seattle. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03. Cited in the summary, chapter 1, chapter 2, chapter 3, chapter 4, chapter 5, chapter 6, chapter 7, chapter 8
21. 21Google Cloud (ed.), Incident report for the Service Control outage of 12 June 2025 (status page; 10:51 to 18:18 PDT by the incident header; mini report gives different times; policy data with blank fields caused a null pointer crash in Service Control; operator report). Google, Mountain View. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03. Cited in the summary, chapter 1, chapter 2, chapter 3, chapter 4, chapter 5, chapter 6, chapter 7, chapter 8
22. 22Cloudflare (ed.), Cloudflare outage on November 18, 2025 (blog post; start 11:20 UTC; core traffic largely restored 14:30 UTC; full recovery 17:06 UTC; Bot Management feature file doubled in size and exceeded a limit of 200 features; not caused by a cyber attack, per the operator). Cloudflare, San Francisco. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03. Cited in the summary, chapter 1, chapter 2, chapter 3, chapter 4, chapter 5, chapter 6, chapter 7, chapter 8
23. 23Amazon Web Services (ed.), Opening the AWS European Sovereign Cloud (blog announcement of 14 January 2026; Brandenburg region; investment of EUR 7.8 billion stated; vendor announcement, weak evidence). Amazon Web Services, Seattle. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03. Cited in chapter 4, chapter 8
24. 24US General Services Administration (ed.), FedRAMP 20x (programme page; announced March 2025; phase 1 26 submissions; first pilot authorisations 6 March 2026; phase 3 wide-scale adoption active; new Rev5 submissions stop 11 June 2027, a future date that may change). FedRAMP, Washington. Observation year 2026. Accessed 2026-11-03. Cited in chapter 3, chapter 4, chapter 6, chapter 8
25. 25NIST (ed.), The NIST Definition of Cloud Computing, NIST SP 800-145 (publication page; September 2011; five essential characteristics, three service models and four deployment models). National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg. Observation year 2011. Accessed 2026-11-03. Cited in chapter 3, chapter 4, chapter 6, chapter 8
26. 26NIST (ed.), Cloud Computing Synopsis and Recommendations, NIST SP 800-146 (publication page; May 2012). National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg. Observation year 2012. Accessed 2026-11-03. Cited in chapter 6, chapter 8
27. 27NIST (ed.), NIST Cloud Computing Reference Architecture, NIST SP 500-292 (publication page; 8 September 2011). National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg. Observation year 2011. Accessed 2026-11-03. Cited in chapter 6, chapter 8
28. 28Armbrust, M. et al., Above the Clouds: A Berkeley View of Cloud Computing, Technical Report UCB/EECS-2009-28, 10 February 2009 (report page and abstract). University of California, Berkeley. Observation year 2009. Accessed 2026-11-03. Cited in chapter 3, chapter 4, chapter 6, chapter 8
29. 29Cloud Native Computing Foundation (ed.), CNCF Annual Survey 2024 (report page; tenth annual survey; 750 respondents in fall 2024; Kubernetes percentage not on the page). CNCF, San Francisco. Observation year 2024. Accessed 2026-11-03. Cited in chapter 3, chapter 6, chapter 8
30. 30ETSI (ed.), Multi-access Edge Computing (technology page; industry specification group; news item of 31 October 2025 on Phase 4 specifications and a white paper; no counts on the page). European Telecommunications Standards Institute, Sophia Antipolis. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03. Cited in chapter 4, chapter 6, chapter 8
31. 31UNVERIFIED, not opened: Masanet, E., Shehabi, A., Lei, N., Smith, S. and Koomey, J., Recalibrating global data centre energy-use estimates, Science 367, 984 to 986, 2020, cited from memory; the page returned an access error. Observation year 2020. Accessed 2026-11-03. Cited in chapter 4, chapter 6
32. 32UNVERIFIED, not opened: Satyanarayanan, M., The emergence of edge computing, Computer 50(1), 30 to 39, 2017, cited from memory. Observation year 2017. Accessed 2026-11-03. Cited in chapter 4, chapter 6, chapter 8
33. 33UNVERIFIED, not opened: Shi, W., Cao, J., Zhang, Q., Li, Y. and Xu, L., Edge computing: vision and challenges, IEEE Internet of Things Journal 3(5), 637 to 646, 2016, cited from memory. Observation year 2016. Accessed 2026-11-03. Cited in chapter 4, chapter 6, chapter 8
34. 34UNVERIFIED, not opened: Barroso, L.A., Clidaras, J. and Hölzle, U., The Datacenter as a Computer: Designing Warehouse-Scale Machines, third edition, Morgan and Claypool, 2018, cited from memory. Observation year 2018. Accessed 2026-11-03. Cited in chapter 4, chapter 6
35. 35UNVERIFIED, not opened: Directive (EU) 2023/1791 on energy efficiency, Article 12 on data centre reporting, Official Journal of the European Union, 2023, cited from memory; the page returned no content. Observation year 2023. Accessed 2026-11-03. Cited in chapter 4, chapter 6
36. 36UNVERIFIED, not opened: Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2024/1364 on the first phase of the establishment of a common Union rating scheme for data centres, 2024, cited from memory; the page returned no content. Observation year 2024. Accessed 2026-11-03. Cited in chapter 6
37. 37UNVERIFIED, not opened: Regulation (EU) 2023/2854 (Data Act), Official Journal of the European Union, 2023, cited from memory; the page returned no content, and the policy pages [15] [16] were read instead. Observation year 2023. Accessed 2026-11-03. Cited in chapter 6
38. 38UNVERIFIED, not opened: Regulation (EU) 2022/2554 on digital operational resilience for the financial sector (DORA), Official Journal of the European Union, 2022, cited from memory; the ESMA page [17] was read instead. Observation year 2022. Accessed 2026-11-03. Cited in chapter 6, chapter 8
39. 39UNVERIFIED, not opened: UK Competition and Markets Authority (ed.), Cloud services market investigation final decision report, 31 July 2025 and 1 August 2025, cited from the case page [11]; the report documents were not opened. Competition and Markets Authority, London. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03.
40. 40UNVERIFIED, not opened: Microsoft (ed.), Azure Front Door incident reports of October 2025, cited from memory; the page returned an error and no figure is used. Microsoft, Redmond. Observation year 2025. Accessed 2026-11-03. Cited in chapter 4
41. 41UNVERIFIED, not opened: ISO and IEC (eds.), ISO/IEC 30134-2 Information technology, data centres, key performance indicators, part 2, power usage effectiveness (PUE), cited from memory. International Organization for Standardization, Geneva. Observation year 2016. Accessed 2026-11-03. Cited in chapter 6
42. 42UNVERIFIED, not opened: ISO and IEC (eds.), ISO/IEC 22123-1 Cloud computing, part 1, vocabulary, cited from memory. International Organization for Standardization, Geneva. Observation year 2023. Accessed 2026-11-03. Cited in chapter 6
43. 43UNVERIFIED, not opened: Infocomm Media Development Authority (ed.), Green Data Centre Roadmap, Singapore, cited from memory; the page returned no content and no figure is used. IMDA, Singapore. Observation year 2024. Accessed 2026-11-03. Cited in chapter 6, chapter 8

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