Microsoft is dealing with an antitrust complaint in Europe from France’s OVHcloud.
The French information centre supplier, which sells internet hosting, cloud computing and devoted server situations, filed the complaint with the European Commission’s (EC) antitrust arm in the summertime of 2021.
The submitting – which has solely come to mild over the previous few days – focuses on how Microsoft runs its licensing operation. Pulling companies from Azure, it’s alleged, could make issues a great deal dearer for competing clouds.
An OVHcloud spokesperson advised The Register: “We affirm that a number of firms together with OVHcloud are taking motion to make sure a degree taking part in area amongst cloud companies suppliers working within the European Digital Single Market, by submitting a complaint with DG Competition of the European Commission against Microsoft. According to the plaintiffs, by way of abusing its dominant place, Microsoft undermines honest competitors and limits client alternative within the cloud computing companies market.”
The Reg understands two different European cloud gamers joined within the complaint.
In complaints filed to the Commission, the plaintiffs are nameless till fairly late within the course of, with the defendant solely turning into conscious of the identities of the complainants months after it has been within the system.
It’s been a busy 12 months for OVH: it suffered a fire that destroyed one of its data centers in March. Another bit barn was later written off as the corporate recovered from the incident. OVH then went public on the Euronext Paris inventory alternate later in 2021 with an providing value of €18.50 per share and at the moment stands at €23.19 on the time of writing.
As for Microsoft, it was already the topic of a complaint filed with the EC competitors watchdog late final yr by on-premises collaboration platforms supplier NextCloud, which is aggrieved over Microsoft’s behavior of bundling OneDrive and different companies with Windows.
In response to the OVH complaint, a Microsoft spokesperson advised us:
“The cloud market is rising and European cloud suppliers have constructed profitable enterprise fashions utilizing Microsoft software program and companies. Cloud suppliers take pleasure in many choices to offer cloud companies to their clients utilizing Microsoft software program, whether or not bought by the client or the accomplice. We’re constantly evaluating how we are able to finest assist companions and make Microsoft software program obtainable to clients throughout all environments, together with these of different cloud suppliers.”
None of toing and froing with administrations just like the EC might be new to Microsoft.
In 2018, Microsoft president Brad Smith issued some vaguely patronizing recommendation round antitrust to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, little question linked to the Windows large’s storied historical past of coping with complaints round its enterprise practices relationship again many years.
Famously, in 1998’s US v Microsoft Corp, Microsoft was accused of monopoly exercise by making a gift of its browser software program free of charge, an motion that led to the collapse of rival browser-maker Netscape. It in the end settled the case in November 2001, agreeing to be monitored and to reveal sure APIs and protocols.
Later, in a 2007 abuse of dominance case in Europe, Microsoft Corp. v. Commission, the EC advised Microsoft it needed to expose specified details about its server merchandise in addition to release a version of Windows that did not have Windows Media Player bundled in.
Microsoft has since cultivated a extra cuddly look and dodged most of the lawsuits lobbed by its rivals. However, regulators are taking discover as soon as once more as complaints against Microsoft mount up.
After all, the corporate has type in relation to nudging clients towards its cloud. AWS was not happy, for example, when Bring Your Own License SQL Server was eliminated in 2019 and Microsoft has confronted scrutiny over alleged makes an attempt to kill off resellable perpetual licenses. ®
https://www.theregister.com/2022/03/17/ovhcloud_microsoft_complaint/
