AWS and Microsoft Face Fresh UK Scrutiny Over Cloud Switching Barriers

This article first appeared on GuruFocus.

Amazon.com Inc. ( AMZN, Financials), the owner of Amazon Web Services, is under further regulatory scrutiny in the U.K. with Microsoft over how easy it is for consumers to switch between cloud providers.Britain’s Competition and Markets Authority stated on Friday that both businesses might do more to decrease obstacles to switching providers and utilizing different cloud services.It may sound complex, but it gets right down to one of the greatest features of the cloud business model: client stickiness.Large corporations typically design apps on particular cloud platforms. The harder or more costly it is to migrate your workloads elsewhere, the more price power the provider may have.The agency wants to give consumers more leeway to switch between providers or to split workloads across multiple clouds.That sets up a possible tradeoff for AWS and Microsoft.This might lead to a more competitive market, since customers are less…