Microsoft hit with Spanish startups’ criticism about cloud practices By Reuters

By Foo Yun Chee

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Microsoft (NASDAQ:) was hit with a Spanish startup group’s criticism about its cloud practices to the Spanish antitrust regulator on Tuesday, the most recent grievance over its fast-growing cloud computing companies and which adopted a commerce group’s EU criticism.

The U.S. tech big ranks second within the cloud computing sector, behind market chief Amazon (NASDAQ:) however is predicted to shut the hole quickly as a clutch of generative AI options powered by OpenAI’s expertise entice enterprise customers.

The Spanish Startup Affiliation, which represents greater than 700 startups in Spain, cited numerous allegedly anti-competitive practices by Microsoft lately.

“Microsoft has not solely taken benefit of the dominant place within the markets of Working Methods (Home windows) and conventional productiveness software program (Microsoft Workplace, Home windows Server, SQL Server) to pressure using its Azure cloud, however they’ve additionally imposed synthetic limitations that restrict the flexibility of startups to compete pretty and competitively,” the criticism seen by Reuters stated.

“These practices embrace limitations to information portability or contractual situations that prohibit competitors in software program licenses, stopping the free alternative of suppliers of those companies, lowering the capability for alternative and adaptability that startups want to have the ability to be resilient, innovate and develop,” the doc stated.

Microsoft defended its cloud practices.

“Microsoft offers alternative and adaptability for our prospects to change to a different cloud supplier without charge, and our licensing phrases allow our prospects and different cloud suppliers to run and supply Microsoft software program on each  cloud,” a spokesperson stated.

“We are going to have interaction with the Spanish Startup Affiliation to be taught extra about its issues.”

The affiliation referred to as on the Spanish competitors watchdog to launch an investigation and to take pressing measures to make sure a aggressive market.

“We consider that every one corporations ought to be capable to compete in an surroundings of equality in order to not be left behind both as prospects or as corporations offering this expertise,” Carlos Mateo, president of the Spanish Startup Affiliation, stated in a press release.

Cloud Infrastructure Providers Suppliers in Europe (CISPE), whose members embrace Amazon, final November complained to EU antitrust regulators about Microsoft’s new contract phrases imposed on Oct. 1, together with different practices, saying these had been harming the European cloud computing ecosystem.

The European Fee has requested cloud rivals about Microsoft’s request for buyer information as a part of its investigation whereas the UK Competitors and Markets Authority can also be probing the sector.