REGULATION
As of the last quarter of 2025, according to Synergy Research Group, Azure, AWS, and Google Cloud accounted for nigh-on two-thirds of the worldwide cloud infrastructure market. Now, obviously, if you hold shares in Amazon, Microsoft, or Alphabet, you’d be pretty happy with this situation. Hell, even if you tied up some of your money in the S&P 500 or top tech stocks or bonds, you’d be asking why I care. You could certainly make an argument, for example, that the fact that we are talking about three companies is proof that the cloud market is competitive. Whether you agree with this sentiment or not, on the 31st of March, the Competition and Markets Authority in the UK announced a “strategic initiative” to investigate the cloud market and specifically whether Microsoft has a monopoly. “The CMA’s focus reflects growing concern that licensing practices and commercial models may make it harder or more expensive to run Microsoft software on competing platforms,” Rob Arnold, Chief Digital Officer of The Bunker, part of the Cyberfort Group. “That risks limiting flexibility at a time when organisations are trying to build more resilient and adaptable IT strategies. “This means that the issue is not dominance alone. It is dependency. When customers are too closely tied to any single provider, it can reduce visibility, increase risk and restrict innovation.” That dependency that Aronld describes comes from the influence Microsoft has across the entire enterprise world, not just in the Cloud. As Raphael Auphan, chief operating officer at Proton, says, it’s no surprise Microsoft has a dominance in cloud. “Our own research found that 88% of publicly listed UK companies use US- owned email providers, and email is rarely a standalone choice. It’s the gateway to the whole tech stack: cloud storage, collaboration tools, identity management. “That number tells you everything you need to know about the structural dependency we’re dealing with. Microsoft’s licensing practices have been deliberately structured to make it look cheaper and easier to stay within the Azure ecosystem than to choose an alternative. That’s not competition but lock- in dressed up as convenience. “The CMA is right to investigate, and the question shouldn’t be whether Microsoft has too much influence. It clearly does. The question is what we’re going to do about it.” Partners in Crime? While the announcement of an investigation doesn’t declare that Microsoft has a monopoly, the fact that there is an investigation at all shows that Azure has significant influence in the cloud marketplace. But while Microsoft is being investigated, AWS seems to be getting away with a lot less scrutiny despite also holding a significant portion of the market.
Rob Arnold
thebunker.net
Raphael Auphan
proton.me
25
cloudresellernews.co.uk
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