Takeaways from Changes to Cloud Egress Fee Policies

This IDC Perspective provides guidance on what the elimination of cloud egress fees means (and doesn't mean) for the public cloud market and enterprises that deploy workloads on public cloud platforms. While the new policies on egress charges during cloud exit events undoubtedly create some opportunities for enterprise cloud buyers, the ambiguities, nuances, and caveats surrounding the change mean that businesses must be highly strategic if they seek to take advantage of the opportunity to migrate workloads off of a cloud platform without paying for data transfers. Because of the complex details surrounding the policies, the extent to which this change makes cloud strategies more flexible and interoperable is quite limited.That said, the plausibility that the new policies reflect a reaction to regulatory changes opens the door to possible further changes in the future. "Ultimately, the unexpected role of regulatory mandates in effecting egress fee updates on the part of cloud SPs may well prove to be the most interesting and impactful consequence of this development," says Christopher Tozzi, adjunct research advisor for IDC's IT Executive Programs (IEP).