The U.K. regulator, Ofcom, is ready to submit the local cloud infrastructure market to the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) for an in-depth inquiry, with Amazon and Microsoft’s conduct in particular firmly in focus.
Although Ofcom’s consultation, which involves gathering stakeholder views from across the cloud sector, is still in its early stages, it has highlighted practices that make it more difficult for businesses to migrate between cloud providers, or even utilize several providers. As a result, it proposes referring the UK cloud services market to the CMA for a formal inquiry.
The essence of the issue is that Amazon, Microsoft, and Google account for more than 80% of cloud income in the UK, and they may impose regulations, prices, and other limitations that make it difficult for smaller providers to gain headway.
These include so-called “egress fees,” which are frequently opaque expenses charged by cloud providers anytime a corporation removes data from the cloud and moves it elsewhere. Ofcom also raises concerns about interoperability, claiming that the major cloud providers design their products in such a way that they do not play well with other providers.
The sources for this piece include an article in TechCrunch.