Dive Brief:
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As cloud providers shift their focus from gaining market share to making profits, cloud prices may be headed upward, according to CIO.com.
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Microsoft, currently the second-largest cloud services provider behind AWS, announced last week it would raise its cloud service prices 13% in the European region.
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News of the rate hikes led some industry experts to predict an inevitable stream of price increases in the near future, while others claimed it was likely an isolated occurrence.
Dive Insight:
The announcement prompted some to speculate that cloud prices may be ready to climb overall, as the market matures and sales of cloud services stabilize.
But others say raising prices in this still-emerging market is a bad move, especially because cost savings are often a chief selling point of the cloud. In addition, because most cloud services are commodity offerings, they tend to track very closely to costs, so Microsoft’s move is likely not an indicator of an overall general trend.
