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Cloud services market ‘is not working’, says UK regulator

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The UK competition regulator has found that competition in the £9bn UK cloud services market “is not working”, with Microsoft and Amazon each facing separate probes over their dominance of the market.

The Competition and Markets Authority said in a provisional decision on Tuesday that an independent panel had found that a lack of competition was “likely to be leading to higher costs, less choice, less innovation and lower quality of service for businesses and organisations”.

The decision comes as the regulator is under intense pressure from the government to show that it is promoting growth, as Labour attempts to increase business investment in the UK. In an unexpected move last week, CMA chair Marcus Bokkerink was ousted by business secretary Jonathan Reynolds and replaced with former Amazon UK head Doug Gurr.

Amazon Web Services and Microsoft are the two largest providers of UK cloud services, each with a share of up to 40 per cent of UK customer spending, followed by Google.

This is a developing story

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