EU cloud competitors show Microsoft the yellow card and Broadcom the red card

Broadcom is a lost cause when it comes to market presence and licensing practices, but not all is lost for Microsoft in this area, according to the European Cloud Competition Observatory (ECCO). This observatory was set up by the industry association Cloud Infrastructure Service Providers in Europe (CISPE) after it surprisingly withdrew its competition complaint against Microsoft with the EU Commission in July. At that time, Microsoft joined the association as a member without voting rights.

Microsoft has promised to correct its contractual clauses for cloud services. The data company has also promised an extended version of Azure Stack HCI so that European cloud providers can offer Microsoft applications and services on their infrastructures. In addition, Microsoft is said to have donated around 20 million euros to CISPE. The ECCO observatory is to monitor the implementation of Microsoft's declarations of intent. The task of the inspectors also includes identifying unfair software licensing that threatens the cloud choice for European customers on a larger scale.

For Microsoft, the traffic light in the first ECCO implementation report is yellow. This means that the Azure operator is still "off track": "There are concerns either that progress has stalled, or that barriers to resolution are proving hard to overcome."

Microsoft's hosting offer is a long time coming

Specifically, Microsoft has not yet fully met the expectations of CISPE members, which include Oxya, Leaseweb, UpCloud and Serverplan as well as the US market leader AWS, in some areas relating to the July agreement. Despite improved cooperation, there has not yet been sufficient progress on the proposed hosting product. Microsoft's recent changes to temporary subscription licenses (Services Provider Licensing Agreement) are also cause for concern. The US company asserts that it will continue to work "for a successful relationship with the European cloud community".

ECCO pulls out the red card in its report on the US technology group Broadcom. The observers complain above all about the price increases following the takeover of the market-dominating virtualization software VMware. CISPE has been campaigning since March for Broadcom to reconsider its "brutal and unacceptable changes to license agreements" for VMware, a product used by many members that is virtually without alternative. However, nothing has changed since then, meaning that the only options left are going to court or cooperating with anti-trust authorities.

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