The UK competition and the British market (CMA) expressed fear that the market of public cloud services in the country is not competitive enough, Silicon Angle reports. It is very likely that CMA will assign the “strategic” status of Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft, which are considered the largest cloud providers of Great Britain. This will entail tightening external antimonopoly control.
The CMA investigation started after another local offom regulator responsible for the telecom sector, in April 2023 published the results of its own research. They showed that key suppliers of cloud services can harm competitors using ambiguous business practitioners. The information was transmitted to the CMA, launching the mechanism of state investigation. In addition, Google herself sent a complaint about Microsoft, she was supported by AWS.
The CMA summarized preliminary conclusions in the seven -page document. One of the key points is the conclusion that suppliers of cloud services actually take a fee for the departure of customers from their platforms. CMA believes that such a practice can prevent users from transferring workloads from one cloud to another or using a multi -high approach.
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Since the investigation began, some market participants have already adjusted their business models, last year payments for unloading data during migration to another platform were canceled by AWS and Google, although the latter in this case required a complete closure of the account. The investigation on the software business of Microsoft continues. According to CMA, the use of Windows Server and SQL Server in Google Cloud and AWS is often twice as much as in Microsoft Azure.
A number of problems arising from some economic and technical factors were also revealed, and not from business practice of cloud operators. For example, large investments are required to enter the market for suppliers of cloud services and scaling, which complicates the appearance and growth of alternative cloud providers.
AWS and Microsoft can get the status of “strategic” players if CMA decides that they have a “significant and fixed effect on the market”. In addition, in order to obtain such a status, the annual revenue of companies should be at least £ 25 ($ 31 billion) billion on the world or £ 1 billion ($ 1.24 billion) in the UK. Companies with a similar status can be fined up to 10% of the annual world income for violations of antimonopoly legislation. The regulator also has the right to demand a change in the business practice-so, CMA considers the need to demand from Microsoft to change the practice of License licensing, as well as oblige suppliers of cloud services to reduce the fee for leaving the cloud.
Google has already stated that they were able to appreciate the CMA what “restrictive” licensing is harmful to British cloud services, threatens economic growth and interferes with innovation. The position is also supported by AWS, also trying to fight the Microsoft monopoly.
Earlier it was reported that CMA extended the terms of the antimonopoly investigation in the country’s cloud market by four months – until August 4, 2025. Before that, it was planned to complete it until April 5. In Europe, Microsoft managed to compromise with small cloud operators, the Cispe association withdrew complaints in response to changes in the IT giant policy and monetary compensation, and later Microsoft itself became part of it, additionally undermining the Google attempts to cope with the competitor.