1. UK government under fire over public sector guidance on using overseas clouds

The government found itself fielding criticism in February 2025, following the publication of guidance by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) to public sector bodies on how to safely and securely host data in overseas datacentres.

The guidance states that public sector organisations can use cloud services that are hosted in datacentres outside of the UK for “resilience, capacity and access to innovation” reasons.

However, the advice was interpreted by some cloud market stakeholders interviewed by Computer Weekly as being an instruction for public sector buyers not to use the services of homegrown suppliers if it is cheaper to buy them from overseas cloud providers.

2. HMRC’s hunt for hyperscaler to lead £500m datacentre exit project deemed ‘anti-competitive’

HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) also incurred the wrath of the UK cloud market in May 2025, following the publication of a tender document for the government tax collection agency’s decade-long £500m datacentre exit and cloud migration project.

Specifically, it was the project’s length and HMRC’s request for a hyperscale cloud firm to oversee the project that ruffled feathers among cloud market commentators, with one claiming the tender could be challenged on legal grounds for being exclusionary to smaller cloud players.

3. AWS emerges as ‘sole bidder’ for HMRC’s £500m datacentre migration project as rivals exit

Further controversy involving this project followed in October 2025, when Computer Weekly exclusively revealed that AWS remained the only tech supplier still in the running for the decade-long deal, after the likes of IBM, Microsoft and Google Cloud exited the tender process.

It was claimed by sources that concerns about the tender being unfairly biased towards AWS were a factor in the suppliers’ decisions to withdraw, and HMRC had pushed back on supplier suggestions to adopt a hybrid cloud setup because of how much legacy IT it has.

4. CMA finally publishes findings from UK cloud market competition probe

The UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) ended its long-running investigation into the inner workings of the UK’s cloud infrastructure services market in July 2025, concluding that Microsoft and Amazon Web Services (AWS) were indulging in behaviours that served to harm competition in the sector.

As a result, the CMA has recommended that both companies face “targeted and bespoke” interventions to curb their anti-competitive behaviours, with its board set to consider this recommendation in early 2026.

5. IT buyers pit US cloud firms against homegrown providers

Against a backdrop of geopolitical unrest and concerns about the US government snooping, the UK’s reliance on overseas cloud providers came into sharper focus during 2025, prompting more thought and consideration from UK IT buyers about the topic of data sovereignty.

Computer Weekly did a deep-dive on this issue in September 2025, drawing comparisons between the UK’s attitude towards the topic and the rest of Europe, where governments are increasingly championing the use of homegrown providers.

6. Large-scale AWS outage hits HMRC and UK-based banking firms

The risks involved with having so much of the UK’s IT infrastructure hosted in overseas clouds became apparent in October 2025, after AWS suffered a multi-hour outage in one of its US datacentres that affected the output of numerous UK-based organisations.

Among those affected was HMRC and Lloyds Banking Group, with the effects on the former prompting MPs to question what the government is doing to ensure public sector entities are protected during downtime events involving their biggest suppliers.

7. Microsoft hides key data flow information in plain sight

More than a year after Computer Weekly first revealed details about Microsoft’s inability to guarantee the sovereignty of policing data hosted within its Azure public cloud, further revelations on the topic emerged this year.

Documents shared with Computer Weekly showed policing data hosted in Microsoft’s hyperscale cloud infrastructure could be processed in more than 100 countries, and that the tech giant was obfuscating this information from its customers.

8. CCS under fire over ‘anti-SME’ supplier requirements for G-Cloud 15

Government procurement chiefs at the Crown Commercial Service (CCS) took the wraps off the fifteenth iteration of the popular G-Cloud procurement framework, kicking off the application process for the purchasing agreement in October 2025.

However, as potential suppliers began to get their heads around the contents of the procurement documents, concerns began to circulate that the entry requirements might be too high and onerous for many small and medium-sized businesses to participate in the framework this time around.

9. European Commission launches AWS and Microsoft-focused cloud competition probes

Several months after the CMA concluded its anti-trust investigation into AWS and Microsoft’s hold on the UK cloud market, word broke that the European Commission was planning separate investigations into both companies and their hold on the continent’s cloud market, under the terms of the Digital Markets Act (DMA).

As detailed by Computer Weekly, the investigations seek to ascertain if the suppliers should be brought in-scope of the DMA by being designated “gatekeepers” in recognition of how much control they wield in the cloud computing market.

10. The rise of the neocloud providers – namely Nscale

This year has seen the rise of a new kind of cloud player emerge in the market, in the form of neocloud providers such as Nscale. The company has had a curious rise to prominence this year, having appeared from seemingly nowhere overnight to find itself front and centre of the UK government’s AI plans.

Since the start of 2025, the company has received passing mentions in various ministerial speeches, building up to its CEO, Josh Payne, being quoted in press releases issued by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) about the government’s ambitious AI agenda.

The company has also picked up eye-watering amounts of investment and secured some sizeable tech deals, despite only being in existence since May 2024.