Creating a fair and open cloud

Microsoft’s licensing practices undermine an open and fair cloud market and harm consumers by stifling competition, raising prices, and hindering innovation in the cloud. Forcing customers to use its Azure cloud service despite security concerns and higher costs leaves consumers vulnerable to disruptions and limits their choices for more secure or cost-effective solutions. Locking customers into the Microsoft cloud ecosystem will risk the ability of companies to freely pick cloud services like enterprise AI.

Research found European businesses and public sector organizations pay up to a billion Euros a year in Microsoft licensing penalties.

---

The harms of Microsoft’s vendor lock-in are clear:

1. The cloud should be open, fair and competitive.  Cloud is at an inflection point with many companies now accelerating their migrations to the cloud, so it is imperative that regulators act now.
2. Microsoft is leveraging its dominance in on-premises software to drive Azure lock-in, stifling competition in the cloud market and harming customers by unfairly charging a steep penalty to use Microsoft must-have software on key rival cloud platforms.
3. These anti-competitive practices negatively impact consumers, forcing them to bear higher prices, less security, and less innovation in their cloud services due to limited cloud choices.
4. Regulatory intervention is needed to ensure fair competition in the cloud market and to protect consumers.

Learn More about Google Cloud's complaint to the EU.