Breaking Cloud Barriers: CMA launches market investigation into cloud services

2023-10-05

Following a referral from Ofcom, The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has launched an independent market investigation into concerns around competition across cloud service providers.

Specifically, AWS and Azure have a combined market share of approximately 80% of the £7.5 billion UK market, based on the 2022 numbers.  The main areas of concern are:

• Egress fees: charges levied on customers to transfer their own data out of these cloud services, and between other cloud providers.
• Technical barriers: lack of interoperability and therefore portability, requiring significant developments and reconfiguration to move applications between cloud providers and on-prem infrastructures.
• Discounts: incentives structured in a way to attract new customers and strengthen vendor lock in.

The above make it difficult, unattractive, and in some cases financially prohibitive for customers to freely move between cloud providers and on-premise infrastructures.

OSG Cloud has been designed both technically and commercially to address these anti-competitive practices.

• Simple, open and transparent pricing.  No complex consumption billing models based on variables that are impossible to accurately predict and plan for.  All inclusive pricing with no hidden egress charges; customers are free to move their data whenever and to wherever they want.
• Built on VMWare Cloud Foundation (VCF) provides a consistent and standardised infrastructure and configuration across hyperscale cloud service providers, as well as specialist and local cloud providers, and on-premise infrastructures.  Zero technical barriers to move, with no reconfiguration or development of applications required.  Maximum flexibility and portability.

At Outsource Group, we believe that you should always chose the most appropriate cloud or infrastructure for your applications.  That decision should always be based on the technical and business requirements.  Once the requirements have been satisfied, then buying smart and maximising budgets is critical; not the other way around.  We’re not interested in locking customers in.  Instead by providing the right technical solution with simple and transparent pricing, customers chose to stay with us because they want to, not because the ‘feel’ they have to.

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/cma-launches-market-investigation-into-cloud-services