AWS currently is the fastest growing public cloud service provider on the market. In 2020, AWS had 31% of the global market share, followed by Azure at 20%. AWS is the cloud provider of choice for many businesses around the world, but not in Belgium. According to Computable, AWS only had 26% of the market share in Belgium in 2020, whereas Microsoft Azure had 81%. Why is that the case?

Why AWS is popular around the world

Let’s take a closer look at AWS’ worldwide popularity first. One of the reasons why AWS became popular is because it was the first cloud provider to market its public cloud services. They launched in 2006, which gave them a seven-year headstart over their competitors. As a result, AWS services have evolved quickly, giving AWS a competitive advantage.

Businesses choose to work with AWS because of the flexibility and the many features it provides. AWS has an enormous catalog with around 175 products and services to choose from. You can select the specific solutions your business wants to use, and configure these solutions to fit your specific needs. These services include compute power, storage, databases, analytics, networking, mobile, developer tools, management tools, IoT, security and enterprise applications.

Another reason why businesses choose AWS is the cost-effectiveness: you can get all cloud services on a pay-as-you-go basis, without long-term contracts or commitments. That means you pay only for the servers, compute power, storage, and other resources you use. This allows businesses to expand and grow as they wish, without worrying about service disruption.

Why AWS isn’t that popular in Belgium (yet)

Businesses in Belgium favour Azure over AWS when going into the cloud. That’s mostly the case because Belgium wasn’t a priority for Amazon for a long time. A small team in The Netherlands was responsible for providing support for the whole Benelux until Amazon decided to open an office in Belgium in 2017. Azure has a lot more representation within the Belgian market, so working with Azure seems almost natural for many organisations. As a consequence, cloud engineers in Belgium often lack sufficient knowledge and expertise to start working with the AWS cloud. It’s difficult to attract talent with adequate AWS cloud skills, making it harder for businesses to go into the AWS cloud.

The next step

The solution lies in addressing this skills gap. Having cloud engineers with the right AWS cloud skills is crucial to prevent wasted investments and security leaks. IDC’s whitepaper Train to Accelerate Your Cloud Strategy shows that trained organizations are 80% faster to adopt cloud, 2.7 times more likely to realise that the cloud can help jump-start innovation, 3.8 times more likely to meet cloud ROI requirements, and 4.4 times more likely to overcome operational and performance concerns.

In order to help organisations around the world build AWS cloud skills, AWS started a Training Partner program. The members of this program are trusted by AWS to offer and deliver official AWS Training, including classroom, live online and digital training offerings. The Campus is one of the three Authorised AWS Training Partners in Belgium. You can discover our full AWS training offer here.

If you want to be familiarised with AWS first, our AWS Discovery Roadshow is a great place to start. This free event introduces you to AWS cloud computing concepts and foundational infrastructure services. The event is particularly relevant for customers who have recently signed up with AWS, or for those who simply want to grasp the basics of the AWS cloud platform. To ensure everyone has a chance to attend, we will organise these events in several locations in Belgium during fall 2021 and early spring 2022. Entrance is free of charge, but registration is required. Discover all available dates and locations on cloudtraining.be.