AWS exec accuses Microsoft of 'anti-competitive tactics' and claims its licensing practices cost customers 'millions of dollars'

Matt Garman hit out at the tech giant on LinkedIn

A senior executive at Amazon Web Services (AWS) has hit out at Microsoft, claiming its "recent licensing rhetoric" is a "troubling admission" of anti-competitive tactics from the tech giant.

Matt Garman believes that while the company has made cosmetic changes to its licences in order to appease regulators, it is only allowing its software to be run on cloud providers "it is less competitively concerned about".

In a LinkedIn post, the AWS senior vice president of sales and marketing said Microsoft's licensing practices are costing customers "millions of dollars".

"Customers and policy makers around the world increasingly see MSFT's recent licensing rhetoric as a troubling admission of the same anti-competitive tactics that many companies have been raising with them for years but went unheeded until they were put before the European Commission", he said.

Garman also published a link to an opinion article published on The Hill calling for more regulation around the bundling of cloud applications and cloud platforms.

The opinion piece by Steve Weber, from the University of California, said: "The unfortunate fact is that bundling of applications with platforms can be an attractive way for big technology players to protect themselves from competition and raise the costs of switching to the point where it becomes prohibitive for customers to really even consider it.

"It's attractive for the would-be monopolist, but it's bad for customers and it's bad for innovation."

Garman added in his post: "MSFT's answer is not to do what's right for customers and fix their policy so all customers can run MSFT's software on the cloud provider they choose; but rather, under the pretext of supporting European technology needs, MSFT proposes to select cloud providers about whom it is less competitively concerned and allow MSFT software to run only on those providers.

"This is not fairness in licensing and is not what customers want. We continue to hear from customers around the world that MSFT's discriminatory licensing practices are costing them millions of dollars and the freedom to work with whom they wish."

Justin Stenger, Microsoft's senior commercial executive for independent software vendors and gaming, responded to Garman's post in the comments.

"How many cloud providers does AWS allow to run AWS software?" Stenger asked. "What Amazon IP does Amazon allow customers to run in the Microsoft Cloud?"

CRN has approached Microsoft for comment.