CISPE argued that Microsoft’s new contractual terms, imposed on October 1, along with other practices, are causing irreparable damage to the European cloud computing ecosystem.
Amazon is the market leader in cloud computing, followed by Microsoft and Google, Alphabet’s unit.
“By leveraging its dominance in productivity software, Microsoft is limiting choice and driving up costs as European customers look to move to the cloud, distorting Europe’s digital economy,” said Francisco Mingorance, secretary general of CISPE, in a press release.
The company is using its dominance in productivity software to steer European customers to its Azure cloud infrastructure to the detriment of its European rivals, CISPE alleged in its complaint to the European Commission.
It alleged that Microsoft’s anti-competitive practices included discriminatory group and related sales of its products, preferential pricing, and foreclosure of customers both technically and competitively.
Microsoft, which has been fined more than 1.6 billion euros ($1.6 billion) by the Commission over the past decade for various antitrust violations, previously said it offered its software to all customers, including rival cloud – service providers.
Cloud service providers in Germany, Italy, Denmark and France, two of which are CISPE members, have filed similar complaints with the Commission over the past two years.
Microsoft later changed licensing agreements and made other changes to make it easier for cloud service providers to compete starting Oct. 1 in an effort to head off EU antitrust concerns.
However, rivals Amazon.com, Alphabet’s Google, Alibaba and Microsoft’s own cloud services are excluded from these changes.
CISPE said the EU’s competition watchdog should tackle the problem by applying Microsoft’s trade body Fair Software Licensing Principles developed last year.
She said an independent European observatory could be set up to check licensing conditions for mainstream software companies.
The commission could also add another provision to recently adopted technology rules, known as the Digital Markets Act, that prohibits cloud computing gatekeepers from favoring their software applications, CISPE said.
($1 = 0.9909 euros)