References and record
Every source the edition rests on, the publication record, the corrections log and the open record.
Contents
- ·Edition home
- ·Executive summary
- 1Cloud is shared infrastructure with a physical footprint
- 2Key findings
- 3Systems and sectors at baseline
- 4Risks and capability
- 5Shared control-plane fault with diverging sovereignty rules
- 6Readings from the other desks
- 7The 2027 agenda
- 8Systems in depth
- AMethodology
- BData appendix
- CReferences and record
- ·Complete edition, for print
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).
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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.
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
C.2Publication record
Publication
- Title
- Exponential Technology Report 2026: Cloud, Edge and Distributed Computing, Baseline Edition
- Series
- Reports · Exponential Technology Series XT-08
- Edition
- Baseline Edition 2026 · inaugural annual
- Version
- v1.0.0 · draft for stewardship review
- Publication ID
- NR-XTECH-CLOUD-GLOBAL-2026-BASELINE-v1.0.0
- Evidence close
- 30 September 2026
- Publication date
- October 2026
- DOI
- concept and version DOI at deposit
Publisher
- Publisher of record
- The Global Centre for Risk and Innovation (GCRI), for the Nexus Consortium
- Place
- Toronto
- Editor
- Saeed Valadbaygi, Chief Steward and Managing Editor
- Stewards
- GCRI · technical truth · the Global Risks Forum (GRF) · public meaning · the Global Risks Alliance (GRA) · capital meaning
- Licence
- text CC BY 4.0; data on the terms of each source
- Copyright
- © 2026 GCRI · Nexus Consortium
- Language
- English (en-GB) source edition
- Correspondence
- Registry correction pathway · editorial office
Colophon
- Format
- A4 portrait · screen, print and archival PDF
- Typefaces
- Space Grotesk (display) · Geist (text) · IBM Plex Sans Italic (standfirsts) · IBM Plex Mono (data)
- Design standard
- Reports Foundational Edition, Volume I, Part VII
- Accessibility
- tagged PDF and HTML targets; text alternatives for every figure
- Production
- Reports editorial team, GCRI
Release path for this version
| Step | What happens | When |
|---|---|---|
| Draft | editorial self-check complete at evidence close | October 2026 |
| Steward review | five passes on the exact draft (keys T · M · F · N) | Q4 2026 |
| Approval | publication authority approves the exact digest | before release |
| Deposit | concept and version DOI minted; registry pointer set | at release |
| Succession | the 2027 cloud edition reports changes against this baseline | 2027 |
- Current version
- v1.0.0 draft, stewardship review
- Previous edition
- none, first edition of the series
- Next edition
- NR-XTECH-CLOUD-GLOBAL-2027-v1.0.0
- Latest version
- resolve the concept DOI or the registry record
- Correction route
- Registry correction pathway
- Notice types
- erratum · addendum · supersession · withdrawal
C.3Corrections log
0correction notices. No edition has been released yet, so none can be corrected; the log below lists each edition’s current version.
| Edition | Version | Date | State | Change | Notice |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| XT-08 | NR-XTECH-CLOUD-GLOBAL-2026-BASELINE-v1.0.0 | October 2026 | Draft | Baseline Edition 2026, inaugural annual edition, | None |
Notice types: erratum, addendum, supersession, withdrawal. A correction is a new version with a published notice; the earlier version stays resolvable, and no edition is ever edited in silence.
C.4Open record
This edition’s open record
- Publication ID
- NR-XTECH-CLOUD-GLOBAL-2026-BASELINE-v1.0.0
- Desk identifier and series alias
- NR-XTC-XT-08-2026-BL
- Collection
- None
- DOI
- Concept and version DOI at deposit, on Zenodo with DataCite metadata
- Versions
- Each correction is a new version (isNewVersionOf); the concept DOI resolves to the latest
- Bundle
- RO-Crate 1.2 with CITATION.cff, CodeMeta and PROV-O provenance; a signed manifest
- Licence
- CC BY 4.0 (SPDX CC-BY-4.0) for original material; metadata CC0 1.0
Credit and identity
- ORCID
- Your iD in the deposit and the contribution record; DataCite can then add the work to your ORCID record
- ROR
- Your organisation by its ROR identifier, never by a typed name alone
- CRediT
- Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Software, Validation, Visualisation, Writing, review and editing
- Account
- None needed to contribute; never a password
Find and follow
Search the open indexes for Cloud, Edge and Distributed Computing; software is cited by its SWHID from Software Heritage, and a quantified scenario run is preregistered on OSF before it is run. Annotation is your choice: Hypothesis opens this page in its own viewer.
Mirrors and harvest
The DOI is canonical. At release each signed bundle is also given an IPFS content identifier and a bloxberg anchor as mirrors; both are listed in the record once they exist. Zenodo exposes every record over OAI-PMH, and reviews and endorsements can arrive through COAR Notify where the repository supports it.
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}C.5Where this edition sits among the six pillars
Foundry seals the evidence and Universe tests it; Reports publishes it; Standards takes its corrections and Academy teaches from it.
- F03 Sealed observations and indicator series Foundry Sealed observations and indicator series behind a profile (closeout).
- F04 After-action and scenario findings for Universe After-action and scenario findings for chapters 10 and 13 (after action review).
- F05 National Portfolio movement for chapter Foundry National Portfolio movement for chapter 11 (after action review).
- Applied in editions Standards Nexus Standards: applied in editions.
- XT-08 edition Reports Cloud, Edge and Distributed Computing 2026, published in every format with its sources, citation and corrections.
- F06 Method and correction findings as change Standards Method and correction findings as change proposals (correction).
- F12 Q4 synthesis informs the next-year Universe Q4 synthesis informs the next-year mandate (renewal).
- Taught in the open Academy Risk Academy: taught in the open.
What Foundry and Universe hand to this edition, and what it hands to Standards, Universe and Academy. From the programme spine; XT-08 is a drafted Baseline Edition, so these handoffs run from its first operational quarter.
| Handoff | Between | What crosses, and when |
|---|---|---|
| F03 | Foundry to Reports | Sealed observations and indicator series behind a profile (closeout). |
| F04 | Universe to Reports | After-action and scenario findings for chapters 10 and 13 (after action review). |
| F05 | Foundry to Reports | National Portfolio movement for chapter 11 (after action review). |
| Ring | Nexus Standards to Reports | Nexus Standards: applied in editions. |
| F06 | Reports to Nexus Standards | Method and correction findings as change proposals (correction). |
| F12 | Reports to Universe | Q4 synthesis informs the next-year mandate (renewal). |
| Ring | Reports to Risk Academy | Risk Academy: taught in the open. |