LONDON (Reuters) -Britain’s antitrust regulator said on Tuesday the cloud computing market was not working as well as it could be, and it would use its new powers to investigate the activities of market leaders Amazon and Microsoft.
The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has been investigating cloud computing, a market dominated by Amazon’s AWS, Microsoft’s Azure and, to a lesser extent, Google Cloud Platform since 2023.
Its independent inquiry group said a lack of effective competition in parts of a market worth 9 billion pounds ($11 billion) in 2023 was likely leading to higher costs, less choice and lower quality services for British businesses.
It said customers faced a limited choice of providers, while technical and commercial barriers made it difficult for cloud customers to switch.
In provisional findings, it also said Microsoft was using its dominance in enterprise software, such as Windows Server and its Microsoft 365 products, to limit competition.
“Microsoft is using its strong position in software to make it harder for AWS and Google to compete effectively for cloud customers that wish to use Microsoft software on the cloud,” the CMA said.
($1 = 0.8046 pounds)
(Reporting by Paul Sandle; editing by Sarah Young)
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