(Bloomberg) —
Microsoft Corp. shouldn’t be allowed to dodge new European Union curbs on the power of other tech giants, cloud computing firms warned in a last-minute bid to change a sweeping law on digital markets.
Business software providers, such as Microsoft, Oracle Corp. and SAP SE, are unfairly excluded from the latest draft of rules intended to rein in search providers, app stores and other services, according to CISPE, a cloud computing lobby that includes Amazon.com Inc.’s AWS.
The group said it’s asked Margrethe Vestager, the EU’s executive vice president for competition and digital issues, to add companies with “dominant positions in productivity and enterprise software” to the so-called Digital Markets Act. Their letter is a late push for action as lawmakers and governments work on final changes to the new law.
Business software providers are abusing software licenses to lock customers into their own cloud infrastructure which “means that other, smaller cloud infrastructure providers cannot compete,” the companies said in a joint letter with to Vestager on Monday, signed by cloud computing providers and some 30 smaller companies offering cloud services.
While NextCloud Inc. has filed an antitrust complaint against Microsoft, the cloud companies said they couldn’t wait for an eventual “victory in antitrust litigations in 10 years or more when the competitiveness of the market will not be recoverable.”
Microsoft pointed to previous statements that it supported the EU rules and declined to comment further. SAP said business-to-business companies “are not the target of the Digital Markets Act” and it welcomed strong competition in the marketplace.
Amazon.com and AWS both declined to comment while Oracle didn’t respond to emailed questions.
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