According to Ofcom, AWS and Microsoft have too big an impact on society due to their dominant influence in the cloud space. Both cloud giants are guilty of anti-competitive practices.

Ofcom, the UK version of the BIPT, today announces its conclusions from an initial market study. A direct hit of more than two hundred pages, which fortunately can be summarized very briefly. The UK regulator for digital communications believes that AWS and Microsoft have become too dominant in the cloud industry.

The regulator supports this statement with market figures. AWS and Microsoft are tied with a market share of thirty to forty percent. This means that two players alone share eighty percent of the cake. Google Cloud was initially included in the study, but the third superpower has to be content with five percent in Great Britain.

restrict selection

This limits the choices companies can make when choosing a cloud partner. In addition, AWS and Microsoft are guilty of anti-competitive practices, the regulator ruled. Once a customer is on board, the providers make it difficult for him to leave the ship at all. The transfer of data to another provider involves a lot of effort and/or costs. This is of particular concern in the cloud industry as many industries today are dependent on the cloud.

Immediate sanctions will not yet follow for AWS and Microsoft. More thorough investigations are needed to confirm these initial conclusions. Ofcom has given itself a deadline of October 5th to submit a final report. AWS and Microsoft have already agreed to work together.

Microsoft may already be feeling the storm, because this is not an isolated case. The company is currently handling a lawsuit from French cloud provider OHV. The German market regulator also has Microsoft in its sights. The legal department has a busy year ahead.