Microsoft: Microsoft hit with Spanish startups’ criticism about cloud practices

Microsoft 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 providers 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 however is predicted to shut the hole quickly as a clutch of generative AI options powered by OpenAI’s know-how entice enterprise customers.

The Spanish Startup Affiliation, which represents greater than 700 startups in Spain, cited quite a few allegedly anti-competitive practices by Microsoft in recent times.

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

“These practices embrace boundaries to information portability or contractual circumstances that prohibit competitors in software program licenses, stopping the free selection of suppliers of those providers, lowering the capability for selection and suppleness that startups want to have the ability to be resilient, innovate and develop,” the doc mentioned.

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

“We imagine that each one firms ought to have the ability to compete in an setting of equality in order to not be left behind both as prospects or as firms offering this know-how,” Carlos Mateo, president of the Spanish Startup Affiliation, mentioned in an announcement. 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.