IGF 2025 Lightning Talk #54 Cloud computing: Efficiency and Trust

Cloud computing has become an appealing choice for digital services implementation: leading cloud providers offer an ever-growing suite of ready-to-integrate digital components, seemingly unconstrained capacity, best-in-class security, and superior operational processes. It is no surprise that corporate decision-makers are increasingly choosing cloud solutions. They understand the operational risks and economical aspects such as the total cost of ownership, and embrace cloud computing as a resilient and efficient solution—about half of European enterprises purchased cloud computing services in 2024. However, economies of scale concentrated cloud expertise within a few global providers, primarily headquartered in the U.S. and, increasingly, China. In this talk we will explain the fundamental structure of the cloud computing, why it is highly efficient and resilient, and present some key adoption statistics. We will then explain essential building blocs of the internet and thus cloud services. We reflect over how they inherently depend on trust, and discuss implications of the diminishing trust in the international relations today. Finally, we will suggest a checklist for government and corporate decision-makers to guide their cloud adoption strategies.

The planned session if fully compatible with hybrid meetings. The presentation will be shared, and the moderator will take questions orderly from online and physical audience.