Ofcom has referred the cloud services market to the Competition and Markets Authority.
The features which Ofcom is most concerned about are:
- Egress fees – charges that cloud customers must pay to move their data out of the cloud
- Discounts – which may incentivise customers to use only one cloud provider
- Technical barriers to switching – which may prevent customers from being able to switch between different clouds or use more than one provider
Ofcom's report also outlines concerns it has heard about the software licensing practices of some cloud providers, in particular Microsoft.
