Operator of very large-scale data centres, typically a major cloud provider running massive compute capacity.
A hyperscaler is an operator of very large-scale data centres, able to deploy and manage massive, standardised compute and storage capacity. The term mainly designates the major public cloud providers that run dozens of sites totalling several gigawatts of installed power. Their model rests on extreme optimisation of energy efficiency, automation and infrastructure pooling. For the insurance market, hyperscalers concentrate considerable accumulation risk: a growing share of the digital economy depends on a few operators, so a major outage at one provider can trigger simultaneous business interruptions across a multitude of insureds in varied lines. This concentration recreates, at the scale of cloud infrastructure, the accumulation and monoculture problem already identified for critical software and systems.
A prolonged regional outage at a major cloud provider can simultaneously interrupt thousands of client companies, turning a technical incident into an accumulation loss for insurers.
hyperscaler, hyperscale, fournisseur cloud hyperscale