The cloud market is perceived as complex, especially due to the overcomplicated language found in the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sector. To understand the cloud market, its business models and infrastructure, it is helpful to compare it to another critical infrastructure sector – the energy sector. The similarities are striking. We can apply many of the regulatory and policy lessons-learned from the development of the energy sector to the cloud infrastructure industry, as the economic issues are so similar.

In 2020, the Sustainable Digital Infrastructure Alliance (SDIA) wrote extensively about the premise of digital resources as a utility, drawing parallels with the development of the energy sector in: The Utility of the Future Report.

Authors Thomas Moran and Max Schulze, representing the SDIA community, build on the work contained within that report to further extrapolate the urgent need to regulate digital resource utility companies.

This position paper comprises publicly available information from white papers, academic studies, industrial publications, and news articles to formulate the most observed challenges, and potential opportunities for a fair and equitable market. Feedback was provided by industry experts before the final draft was released. The options stated in this report are neither exhaustive nor exclusive.

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