The move comes after French cloud computing provider OVHcloud, Italian cloud provider Aruba and the Danish Association of Cloud Service Providers filed complaints with the European Commission about Microsoft’s cloud operations and licensing agreements.

The person familiar with the matter said Microsoft has made a specific proposal based on what Microsoft President Brad Smith announced last year.

The person familiar with the matter said the European Commission, which is the competition enforcement agency for the 27 EU member states, has fined Microsoft a total of more than 1.6 billion euros (currently about 11.92 billion yuan) over the past 10 years. The European Commission will also oversee the final resolution of the complaint.

Microsoft said it changed its licensing practices in October of last year based on feedback from European cloud providers.

Both the EU antitrust regulator and OVHcloud declined to comment, and Aruba and the Danish Cloud Service Providers Association have not yet responded.

Cloud Infrastructure Service Providers in Europe (CISPE) is a trade group whose members include cloud computing market leader Amazon.com Inc. The organization said Microsoft’s approach was not the way to resolve the complaint.

A spokeswoman for the organization said: “We have had initial discussions with Microsoft but have not seen any changes to ensure that all European customers have the opportunity to run the software they want in the cloud of their choice and are protected from unfair licensing terms or discriminatory pricing. So, complaints will continue.”

Last week it was reported that competitors wanted Microsoft to do more to address their complaints after the initial offer fell short of requirements. That put enormous pressure on Microsoft to improve the company’s offer, the person familiar with the matter said.

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French cloud computing provider OVHcloud is also waiting for Microsoft to come up with a more concrete solution, a person familiar with the matter said, adding that among the vendors that have filed antitrust complaints with the European Commission.

Microsoft could avoid a formal antitrust investigation by the European Commission if it can reach a settlement privately with the technology companies that filed the complaints. If the investigation is opened and the antitrust charges are confirmed, the European Commission could issue a fine of up to 10% of Microsoft’s total global revenue.

In 2021, the aforementioned German manufacturer Nextcloud reportedly took the lead in complaining to the European Commission, the EU’s executive body, about Microsoft’s monopolistic practices, saying that Microsoft had abused its dominant position in computer operating systems by combining the network storage service OneDrive (a type of Microsoft cloud computing service) The company said that Microsoft abused its dominant position in computer operating systems by bundling the network storage service OneDrive (a Microsoft cloud computing service) with two operating systems, Windows 10 and Windows 11.

Microsoft has been a frequent visitor to the European Commission on antitrust issues, having been the subject of numerous formal antitrust investigations and charges over the past several decades (mainly related to the bundling of its own applications in the Windows operating system), and having been fined a total of €1.6 billion ($1.7 billion). The European Commission has issued a total of €1.6 billion ($1.7 billion) in fines.

On Wednesday (March 22), Nextcloud CEO Frank Karlitschek told the press that Microsoft had contacted Nextcloud about a year ago, but did not address the European tech industry’s concerns about bundling of cloud computing services.

Karlitschek said he hopes to have more conversations with Microsoft, but they must be serious talks about the industry’s concerns.

Among the vendors reportedly filing complaints to the European Commission this time around are OVHcloud, Italian cloud computing provider Aruba, and a Danish association representing the cloud computing industry. The vendors’ complaints center on some of the practices of Microsoft’s cloud computing business and customer licensing agreements.

Last October, Microsoft said it had made some changes to its cloud computing customer licensing agreements, which amounted to a response to complaints filed by the EU cloud computing industry.

A Microsoft spokeswoman said Microsoft appreciated the fruitful talks with European service providers that led to adjustments in Microsoft’s product policies, and Microsoft appreciated the feedback from European service providers.

At this time, Aruba and the “Danish Cloud Community” association have no further comment.

In 2022, another industry association, the European Alliance of Cloud Service Providers, also filed an antitrust complaint against Microsoft’s cloud business with the European Commission, and a spokeswoman for the association said that last week, Microsoft had contacted the association to express its willingness to negotiate and make some adjustments to its products and services.

It is worth mentioning that the members of the European Alliance of Cloud Computing Service Providers include Amazon.com, the absolute leader of the global cloud computing market.

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On Monday, local time, Microsoft announced a series of adjustments, including software licensing policies, which will take effect on Oct. 1, and which Microsoft claims will facilitate better competition among players in the cloud computing market.

However, the software licensing policy adjustments announced by Microsoft exclude a total of four companies – Amazon, Google, Alibaba and Microsoft itself.

Just recently, a number of cloud computing service providers in the European market filed complaints with the European Commission, alleging a number of unfair practices by Microsoft. Subsequently, the European Commission launched a preliminary investigation, asking a number of cloud computing companies for details of Microsoft’s practices and the impact they have had on rival platforms.

In the global cloud computing market, Amazon is far ahead, followed by Microsoft and Google Inc. But as the leader, Amazon has shown no mercy when it comes to blasting Microsoft Corp.

In an email to the press, a spokesperson for Amazon’s cloud computing division said that Microsoft’s previous behavior, which already existed to the detriment of its competitors, is now intensifying, and that Microsoft is making new unfair restrictions to avoid the competition it faces in the market. Microsoft is not listening to its customers and giving all of them a fair software license in the cloud computing space.

Marcus Jadotte, Google’s vice president for government and policy affairs, also criticized Microsoft. In a post on the Twitter site, Jadotte said the cloud computing industry’s commitment to customers is to provide flexible, elastic computing services where customers don’t have to worry about traditional contract lock-in, and that cloud computing customers should be able to migrate freely across platforms and choose the technology and platform that works best for them, rather than being forced to choose the platform that best serves Microsoft’s interests.

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