Microsoft will soon become a member of CISPEthe trade association for European cloud providers, months after reaching an agreement with them, and trying to end their complaints that they carried out anti-competitive practices. However, according to The Register, not all members of the group are happy with their new member.
According to a CISPE spokesperson, who has confirmed the entry into the Redmond group as its 39th partner, remember that the group is representative of the sector in the region, and that therefore includes the hyperscalars. Furthermore, he points out that «There are many areas where we are very much in line, so it is helpful to have Microsoft involved. It is a step towards a greater CISPE«.
Among the areas in which CISPE and Microsoft agree is legislation on a framework that facilitates the change between clouds, with which cloud providers and their customers can implement, and automate, compliance with the rules of the EU data law.
The CISPE Board of Directors, made up of a dozen members, is the one that voted in favor of Microsoft joining the organization, although apparently the vote was not unanimously favorable, and AWS at least voted against. The rest of the members will receive information about the decision and the entry of this new partner at the next general assembly of CISPE, which will take place on February 13. It is likely, however, that they have already received information about it, and there are partners who are quite upset by the decision to accept Microsoft.
According to a Microsoft spokesperson, the company is grateful to CISPE for accepting its application to join the association as a non-voting supporting member. Furthermore, he has confirmed that they will continue «focused on developing a constructive agreement that supports European cloud providers«.
Both CISPE and AWS have publicly criticized Microsoft’s licensing practices, which among other things involve charging up to five times more to run certain applications on non-Azure clouds. In fact, CISPE filed a complaint about this to the European Commission at the end of 2022 about this, and also about the technical adjustments required to run some programs on third-party clouds.
After this, Microsoft decided to sit down to negotiate with the members of CISPE and has negotiated a confidential agreement, which apparently includes a cash payment of about 30 million euros, an improved version of Azure Local and the suspension of license audits. Microsoft for two years.
Google tried to join CISPE last yearoffering its partners financial incentives, both cash and cloud credits. Apparently, Google wanted a seat on the board and for the organization to continue fighting Microsoft in court.
It did enter the Open Cloud Coalition, which for Microsoft is a lobbying front that wants to end restrictive licensing policies. In addition, it has filed another complaint with the European Commission against Microsoft for the amounts that companies and public bodies have to pay to run various Microsoft software applications in cloud environments outside of Azure.
