- First. This would mark the first time the Digital Markets Act has been applied to cloud computing — uncharted territory that could reshape how enterprise workloads are priced, ported, and locked in across European markets.
- Scope. AWS and Microsoft Azure together hold roughly two-thirds of the European enterprise cloud market; a gatekeeper designation would force both companies to enable easier data portability, interoperability, and switching between providers.
- Timeline. A formal designation decision is expected by November 2026, with a six-month compliance window and cloud-specific remedies unlikely to take legal effect before 2028.
European Commission officials are putting the final touches on a Digital Markets Act investigation into Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure that will conclude both companies meet the DMA’s threshold for gatekeeper status in cloud services, according to reporting by Bloomberg on October 2. A formal decision is expected by November. The conclusion would make cloud computing the DMA’s fourth regulated sector, following app stores, online search, and social media.
What Gatekeeper Status Means
Under the DMA, a gatekeeper designation triggers obligations tailored to the specific market. For cloud providers, the Commission has indicated its primary concerns are customer lock-in, high switching costs, and limited interoperability between platforms. If the designation is confirmed, AWS and Azure will face requirements to make workloads easier to migrate to competing clouds, to provide standardised data export tools, and potentially to open technical interfaces to rival platforms.
The Commission acknowledged in background briefings that existing DMA obligations under Articles 5 and 6 — designed for consumer-facing services like app stores — do not map cleanly onto B2B cloud dynamics. Regulators are expected to craft cloud-specific remedies as part of the designation, a process that has no precedent under the regulation and will likely be contested. Google Cloud was not included in the current investigation, though officials did not rule out a future probe.
The Context: Microsoft’s Licensing Practices
Microsoft faces particular scrutiny over its software licensing model. Both the UK Competition and Markets Authority and the US Federal Trade Commission have separately found that Microsoft’s restrictions on running its enterprise software — including Teams, Office, and Windows Server — outside Azure effectively penalise customers who switch to rival clouds. The EU investigation is expected to treat that licensing behaviour as evidence of the lock-in concerns that justify gatekeeper designation.
The DMA probe is part of a broader European campaign to regulate cloud infrastructure. As part of this trend, EU AI Act enforcement letters have already gone out to companies deploying AI in employment and biometric contexts, signalling that Brussels is prepared to enforce its new digital rulebook across multiple tech layers simultaneously. The cloud investigation, however, is the most commercially significant action yet: AWS and Azure collectively process hundreds of billions of euros of European enterprise workloads annually.
What Comes Next
Once designated, AWS and Azure will each have six months to achieve compliance with whatever specific obligations the Commission sets — a period that will almost certainly involve litigation, as neither company is expected to accept the designation without legal challenge. Cloud-specific DMA remedies are not expected to take effect in practice before 2028. In the meantime, the investigation’s existence is already shifting the market: several large European enterprises have told cloud brokers they are delaying multi-year Azure and AWS commitments while the regulatory picture clarifies, a dynamic that could benefit European cloud providers and smaller hyperscalers competing for enterprise contracts.