European Union antitrust regulators are quizzing Microsoft’s Cloud rivals and customers about its cloud business and licensing deals, in a move that could lead to a formal investigation, Reuters news report said.
Microsoft’s Cloud is the second largest cloud service provider in the world with 22 percent share. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the Cloud market leader with 33 percent share in Q4 2021, according to Canalys. Google Cloud has 9 percent share.
The European Commission has fined Microsoft a total 1.6 billion euros ($1.8 billion) in the previous decade for breaching EU antitrust rules and for not complying with its order to halt anti-competitive practices.
Recently, Germany-based software provider NextCloud, France’s OVHcloud and two other companies filed complaints about Microsoft’s cloud business practices.
“The Commission has information that Microsoft may be using its dominant position in certain software markets to foreclose competition regarding certain cloud computing services,” the questionnaire from EU said.
Regulators asked if the terms in Microsoft’s licensing deals with cloud service providers allow rivals to compete effectively.
They also want to know if companies needed Microsoft’s operating systems and productivity applications to complement their own cloud infrastructure offering in order to compete effectively.
Companies also were asked about the differences in license fees and commercial terms between the licensing deals with cloud service providers and another program in which they package and indirectly resell Microsoft’s cloud services together with their own.
Another focus was potential technical limitations on cloud storage services available on companies’ cloud infrastructure.
“We’re evaluating how we can best support partners and make Microsoft software available to customers across all environments, including those of other cloud providers,” Microsoft said in an emailed statement.
EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager earlier this week said she has no concerns yet about cloud computing and cited the competition from Europe’s Gaia-X initiative.
Research firm IDC is forecasting cloud infrastructure spending to grow 21.7 percent in 2022 compared to 2021 to $90.0 billion. Non-cloud infrastructure is expected to decline 0.3 percent to $59.4 billion. Shared cloud infrastructure spending is expected to grow 25.5 percent to $64.5 billion. Spending on dedicated cloud infrastructure is expected to grow 13.1 percent to $25.4 billion in 2022.
