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At the beginning of April, Microsoft officials said they would address some Complaints from European cloud providers about restrictive cloud licensing policies resulting in customers paying more to run Microsoft software in non-Microsoft cloud environments. On May 18th Microsoft has made its remedial plan public via a blog post by Microsoft President Brad Smith.
In that blog post, Microsoft outlined 5 “European Cloud Principles”. However, much of it is really in the planned changes that level the playing field for European Cloud Providers when it comes to running Microsoft on-premises software, like Windows, Windows Server, SQL Server and Office, on their own infrastructure.
Microsoft introduces outsourcing licensing restrictions in 2019. Customers who used AWS and Google Cloud as dedicated servers to run Windows Server and clients were directly affected, but some of those customers didn’t realize the extent of the impact until their contracts with Microsoft renewed this year. Microsoft’s changes around bring-your-own licensing terms make their contracts more expensive if they want to run Microsoft software on anything but Azure. To justify their changes, Microsoft officials said competitors like AWS or Google were always free to make similar pricing and licensing moves.
Smith said in April that Microsoft would seek to address partner concerns it deems valid. Microsoft agreed to look into the matter after European antitrust regulators began looking into customer and partner complaints, and Bloomberg later published a report citing unsatisfied customers about the new licensing regulations.
In today’s blog post, Smith said he and other senior Microsoft business leaders had meetings with the CEOs of two European suppliers, along with additional meetings with the companies. companies in different European countries. He noted:
“Some of the most compelling feedback for me personally came from an executive who said he felt that he a victim of friendly fire in Microsoft’s competition with Amazon. ‘ It’s hard to hear this – but he was right. Over the past few years, our focus on competing with the largest technology providers has resulted in us not paying attention to the impact on our cloud service partners. We’re making changes to fix this, starting today. “
Smith said Microsoft will provide European cloud providers with support in enabling Microsoft’s on-premises software to run on their cloud infrastructure. This extension will include Windows, Office, and Microsoft 365 apps for business and enterprise. Microsoft will also make licensing Windows Server for virtual environments “easier than ever” by relaxing licensing rules that “reflect legacy software licensing practices, where licenses were tied to physical hardware.” (This is one of the Key Complaints From Microsoft’s Cloud Competitors after the licensing changes were announced in 2019.) He explained:
“Today, Software Assurance benefits do not include license portability for products like Windows, Office, or Windows Server, so customers must use that software in more limited programs or on dedicated hardware to those customers We will be extending Software Assurance to allow customers to use their licenses on any European Cloud Provider offering services in the center their own data, similar to how they can do so on Azure today, whether the hardware is dedicated or multi-tenant.”
Smith also said Microsoft plans to expand the range of products that can be made available to customers at a fixed price for a longer period of time, “which will provide more price stability and certainty for devices.” their suppliers and customers.”
I asked Microsoft if these treatments would also apply to cloud hosts and customers outside of Europe – and if not, why not. No word back so far.
Update: The extent to which these changes help anyone other than European cloud service providers remains to be seen. Microsoft analyst Wes Miller today noted on Twitter that the new language does not change the fact that European and Customers who want to run Microsoft software directly on a competitor’s clouds remain stymied.
