Published : 4 days ago, on 04/12/2024

LONDON (Reuters) – Britain’s competition regulator will issue its provisional findings of its cloud computing investigation in January, rather than this month, according to a revised timetable published on Wednesday.

The final deadline for the final report of July 2025 is unchanged.

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is investigating cloud computing, a market dominated by Amazon’s AWS, Microsoft’s Azure and, to a lesser extent, Google Cloud Platform.

It launched its investigation after Britain’s media regulator Ofcom raised concerns that data transfer fees, volume discounts and other features of the market could be stopping customers from switching supplier or using multiple suppliers.

The CMA has also been examining the software licensing practises of Microsoft in particular, for example for the use of Windows Server and its Microsoft 365 products on rival cloud platforms.

The U.S. tech giant is facing a legal claim in Britain over its cloud licensing policies.

Competition lawyer Maria Luisa Stasi filed a case at the Competition Appeal Tribunal on Tuesday, claiming that British businesses and organisations could collectively be owed more than 1 billion pounds ($1.27 billion) in compensation.

The United States Federal Trade Commission is also looking into the issue. Last week it opened a broad antitrust investigation into Microsoft, according to a source familiar with the matter.

The FTC is examining allegations the software giant is potentially abusing its market power in productivity software by imposing punitive licensing terms to prevent customers from moving their data from its Azure cloud service, sources confirmed earlier this month.

(Reporting by Paul Sandle and Muvija M; editing by Sarah Young)