Updates

Competition and Antitrust

Possible competition probe into leading cloud providers in UK

UK communications regulator Ofcom has referred the public cloud infrastructure services market to the country’s competition regulator Competition and Markets Authority.

“Our market study has identified features that make it more difficult for UK businesses to switch and use multiple cloud suppliers. We are particularly concerned about the position of the market leaders Amazon and Microsoft”, Ofcom said in its announcement earlier this week.

Together, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft and Google, the so-called ‘hyperscalers’, account for an estimated 80% of the cloud computing market in the UK.

Features of concern to Ofcom are:

  • Egress fees: charges customers pay to transfer their data out of a cloud and which can discourage customers from switching to alternative providers.
  • Technical barriers to interoperability and portability: features that can result in customers needing to put additional effort into reconfiguring their data and applications in order to work on different cloud, potentially making it more difficult to combine different services across cloud providers or to change providers.
  • Committed spend discounts: as structured, such discounts can incentivise customers to use a single provider for all or most of their cloud needs, even when better quality alternatives may be available.

We continue to monitor these developments and will return here with further updates.

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Related Updates

UK communications regulator Ofcom has referred the public cloud infrastructure services market to the country’s competition regulator Competition and Markets Authority.

“Our market study has identified features that make it more difficult for UK businesses to switch and use multiple cloud suppliers. We are particularly concerned about the position of the market leaders Amazon and Microsoft”, Ofcom said in its announcement earlier this week.

Together, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft and Google, the so-called ‘hyperscalers’, account for an estimated 80% of the cloud computing market in the UK.

Features of concern to Ofcom are:

  • Egress fees: charges customers pay to transfer their data out of a cloud and which can discourage customers from switching to alternative providers.
  • Technical barriers to interoperability and portability: features that can result in customers needing to put additional effort into reconfiguring their data and applications in order to work on different cloud, potentially making it more difficult to combine different services across cloud providers or to change providers.
  • Committed spend discounts: as structured, such discounts can incentivise customers to use a single provider for all or most of their cloud needs, even when better quality alternatives may be available.