EU cloud association Cispe: Microsoft joins its former critics

The industry association Cloud Infrastructure Service Providers in Europe (CISPE) has a new member: the US software and cloud giant Microsoft. The days in which CISPE accused Microsoft of unfair business practices and lodged a competition complaint with the EU Commission are therefore likely to be over. Microsoft is joining the association as a non-voting supporting member, CISPE announced.

As the association explained, such members cannot belong to the board and therefore cannot influence the policy or direction of the cloud provider alliance. In any case, 75 percent of the board and members must be European companies.

AWS was outvoted

Until now, AWS was the only non-European member. As The Register writes, citing insiders, Amazon's cloud subsidiary is also said to have been against Microsoft joining the association, but was outvoted. Apart from AWS, around 40 European cloud companies such as Leaseweb belong to CISPE.

It was only in July that CISPE withdrew its competition complaint against Microsoft with the EU Commission. The US company had accommodated the cloud providers and introduced some changes to the contractual clauses for its cloud services, the association explained. Microsoft also reimbursed the costs for legal disputes and for "campaigns for fair software licenses", reportedly around 20 million euros. Shortly afterward, the French cloud service provider OVHcloud also dropped its complaint to the EU Commission.

Did Google want to exert influence?

In December, it also emerged that Microsoft's cloud competitor Google was probably trying to persuade the association to uphold the complaint – with financial incentives worth millions. Among other things, Amit Zavery, then CEO of Google Cloud, is said to have offered CISPE members an innovation fund of 4 million euros. However, Google denied any connection between the offers and the CISPE complaint.

Google is also said to have considered becoming a member of CISPE. The company has already joined the Open Cloud Coalition (OCC), which is primarily made up of smaller British operators. Microsoft, in turn, described the OCC as a lobbying submarine for Google.

(axk)