Under the pressure of complaints from competitors, Brad Smith, President of Microsoft, said today that Microsoft will make a series of adjustments to the cloud business policy to make it easier for European cloud service providers to host Microsoft's software products. In addition, Microsoft will also modify its license terms to provide greater license flexibility for European customers. "We have a responsibility to do more," Smith said
At present, Microsoft cloud service is facing a formal investigation by the European Commission. In March this year, Microsoft's cloud computing business was complained by three European competitors, saying that Microsoft undermined the fair competition in the cloud computing service market and limited consumers' choices.
These competitors said that Microsoft's contracts and business practices made the cost of its cloud computing services high. But at the same time, it also makes it difficult for its cloud computing service users to choose alternative services from competitors.
It is reported that increasing the cost of using Microsoft software on a competitor's cloud platform is just a way for Microsoft to try to attract more customers to its own cloud platform. Another method is bundling, that is, multiple products are packaged in a single product, although many users only need one of them, such as windows 365 suit.
In response to these allegations, Smith said: "although not all of your complaints are reasonable, some of them are reasonable. Therefore, we are making adjustments. Cloud service providers in Europe should run Microsoft software as smoothly as we do. We may make more changes in the future."
It should be noted that these new policies of Microsoft only apply to cloud service companies and customers in Europe, not including Microsoft's two biggest competitors: Amazon and Google.
European cloud computing service companies are cautiously optimistic about this statement. Francisco mingorance, Secretary General of European cloud infrastructure service provider (CISP), said he hoped Microsoft would make a "firm and specific" commitment to adjust their license agreement so that it could be audited by a third party.
"In the final analysis, the cloud service industry, users and software cannot rely on the goodwill or handouts of any 'gatekeeper,'" minglars said