CMA to assess whether the company's terms unfairly favor Azure over rival platforms

The UK's competition watchdog will investigate Microsoft's business software ecosystem over concerns that its licensing policies reduce competition in the cloud market.

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) announced the move today as one of several decisions following its investigation into the health of the cloud services marketplace last year.

As well as preparing a strategic market status (SMS) investigation into Microsoft's applications portfolio, the regulator says that Microsoft and Amazon have set out actions on cloud egress fees and interoperability, highlighted as stifling competition in its final decision on the cloud investigation.

In light of this, it appears that the watchdog has refrained from an investigation into whether the two cloud giants should be designated with strategic market status in the cloud, as it was minded to last year, at least while the companies cooperate.

Designating a company with strategic market status would allow the regulator ...