In October 2022, the UK’s communications regulator, Ofcom, launched an investigation into the practices of the cloud hyperscalers. Since then, Google, Amazon and Microsoft have been referred to the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) – the competition regulator – putting the issue of cloud vendor lock-in firmly in the spotlight.
There have been multiple acts to this story, but recently, the CMA published the findings of qualitative interviews with hyperscaler customers as the first phase of the investigation. Like many in the industry expected, interoperability was the main concern, as technical barriers were making moving data or services between cloud computing services a significant challenge. Egress fees – which are charged for moving data out of a provider’s cloud – were somewhat surprisingly seen as less of an issue, with many of the organizations interviewed describing them as negligible.
