Brussels, June 25, 2026 — The European Commission today informed Amazon and Microsoft of its preliminary view that Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure meet the criteria for designation as “gatekeepers” under the Digital Markets Act (DMA). If confirmed, the decision would force both cloud giants to open their platforms, share data with rivals, and stop favoring their own services—changes that could upend how enterprises buy, run, and pay for cloud infrastructure across Europe.

The non‑confidential summary of the preliminary findings, obtained by WindowsNews.ai, argues that AWS and Azure serve as “important gateways for business users to reach end users” and enjoy entrenched market positions that are unlikely to be challenged in the near future. Each platform controls more than 30% of the European cloud infrastructure market, well above the quantitative thresholds set out in the DMA. Crucially, the Commission also found “qualitative indicators” of gatekeeper power, including high switching costs, technical lock‑in, and the providers’ dual role as both marketplace operators and competitors to the very software vendors that depend on their platforms.

What It Means to Be a Cloud Gatekeeper Under the DMA

The DMA, which entered into force in November 2022 and became applicable in May 2023, was designed to curb the power of large digital platforms that act as bottlenecks between businesses and consumers. For cloud services, gatekeeper designation would impose a specific set of “dos and don’ts” aimed at making it easier for enterprises to switch providers, combine services from multiple vendors, and avoid being locked into a single ecosystem.

Under Article 6 of the regulation, gatekeepers would be required to:
- Provide third‑party cloud and software vendors with access to the same interoperability interfaces, developer tools, and performance monitoring data that the gatekeeper’s own services enjoy.
- Allow business users to port their data—including virtual machines, databases, and application configurations—out of the platform at zero cost and without technical barriers.
- Cease self‑preferencing in how they rank or display their own services versus those of competitors in cloud marketplaces.
- Offer fair, reasonable, and non‑discriminatory (FRAND) terms for any business that wants to integrate with their core platform services.
- Interoperate with third‑party identity management, billing, and security tools, ending the need for enterprises to adopt the gatekeeper’s proprietary solutions.

Moreover, gatekeepers would be barred from combining personal data from their cloud service with data from other core platform services without explicit user consent, and they would have to allow enterprise customers to use software licenses they already own on any cloud infrastructure—a direct challenge to the licensing practices that have been at the heart of multiple complaints.

The Long Road to Cloud Regulation

Today’s announcement did not come out of nowhere. Since 2020, European cloud providers, led by French‑based OVHcloud and German‑based IONOS, have filed successive complaints with the Commission, alleging that Microsoft in particular uses restrictive software licensing to steer customers toward Azure. The complaints argued that running Microsoft software—Windows Server, SQL Server, and the Office suite—costs significantly more on competing clouds, a practice known as “license mobility restrictions.”

In response, Microsoft introduced the “Azure Hybrid Benefit” and later, in 2024, rolled out “Flexible Virtualization Benefit,” which it claimed would resolve the disparities. But rivals and enterprise customers alike dismissed those moves as cosmetic. “The new licensing terms still require you to count every virtual core and buy Software Assurance across every possible platform—it’s a bureaucratic nightmare that effectively penalizes multi‑cloud,” said Dana Bergström, CTO of Swedish fintech company Trustly, in a March 2026 interview.

AWS, meanwhile, faced its own set of accusations. Competitors pointed to the sheer breadth of its proprietary services—from Lambda to DynamoDB—that make a workload “sticky” once it’s built. “You don’t just lift and shift a server; you have to rewrite your entire application logic if you want to leave AWS,” noted Gartner analyst Eric Hunter in a recent report. The Commission’s preliminary view appears to endorse that analysis, citing “deep integration of platform‑specific services” as a barrier to switching.

Immediate Implications for Enterprise IT

For the 90% of European enterprises that now run at least some workloads on AWS or Azure, the designation would prompt a rapid re‑evaluation of cloud strategy. The most immediate effect would be the cessation of so‑called “data egress fees”—charges that cloud providers levy when a customer moves data out of their infrastructure. AWS currently charges $0.09 per GB for data transferred from its regions to the internet, while Azure charges between $0.087 and $0.12 per GB depending on the destination. Under the DMA, these fees would have to disappear for any data that a business user wants to port to another provider.

“That alone could save large enterprises millions of euros a year,” said Petra Lindström, director of IT infrastructure at automotive supplier BorgWarner Europe. “We’ve been wanting to mirror our analytics environment across AWS and GCP for years, but the egress costs made the business case impossible. If those fees go to zero, multi‑cloud suddenly becomes feasible.”

More transformative would be the interoperability mandate. Today, an enterprise that wants to use Azure’s AI‑powered Cognitive Search alongside AWS’s SageMaker has to build custom connectors and maintain complex authentication bridges. The DMA would require the gatekeepers to publish APIs and allow third‑party middlewares to plug in directly, making hybrid architectures seamless for the first time. “This is the death of the ‘single cloud’ orthodoxy,” said Hunter. “We’ll see a Cambrian explosion of multi‑cloud tooling and services that can span AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and even on‑premises environments without re‑engineering.”

However, the designation also introduces new compliance burdens for enterprise customers. If AWS and Azure are forced to share more data with competitors, that data could include aggregated usage patterns of business users. Companies that operate in regulated industries—finance, healthcare, energy—will need to revisit their data governance policies to ensure that no sensitive information inadvertently leaks through mandated interoperability interfaces. Data protection authorities have already signaled they will issue joint guidance on how to reconcile DMA obligations with GDPR.

Reactions from Amazon and Microsoft

Both companies received the preliminary findings this morning and have been given 12 weeks to respond and propose commitments. In a statement, Microsoft Corporate Vice President for EU Government Affairs Casper Klynge said: “We disagree with today’s preliminary assessment and will engage constructively with the Commission to demonstrate that our cloud services foster innovation and offer customers genuine choice. The flexible licensing and hybrid benefits we have introduced go far beyond what any other cloud provider offers.”

Amazon struck a similar tone. “AWS has bent over backwards to support open‑source standards and provide customers with multiple ways to move their data. The DMA should not penalize a platform simply because it’s popular with developers,” said the company’s Brussels‑based spokesperson. Both firms are expected to argue that the market is dynamic and that their large shares reflect superior technology rather than unassailable gatekeeper positions.

Yet the Commission appears to have anticipated these defenses. The preliminary finding explicitly rejects the argument that a fast‑growing market cannot harbor gatekeepers, noting that “the presence of potential or fringe competition does not preclude the existence of a durable position of market power, especially when entry barriers are high and switching costs are prohibitive.” Legal experts say that under the DMA, past designations have survived appeal: when Apple was designated for iOS and its App Store, the General Court upheld the decision in 2025, setting a formidable precedent.

What Enterprise IT Should Do Now

With a final designation likely by December 2026 and obligations taking effect six months thereafter, enterprise IT leaders have a narrow window to prepare. The following steps should be on every CIO’s roadmap:

1. Audit Cloud Dependency – Map every workload currently running on AWS and Azure, identifying which proprietary services, APIs, or data formats it depends on. The goal is to understand how easily each application could be migrated or replicated on an alternative platform, should the new rules make it advantageous.

2. Multiply Licensing Agreements – For companies heavily reliant on Microsoft software, now is the time to renegotiate enterprise agreements. Insist on terms that pre‑emptively reflect the FRAND principles the DMA will enforce, such as the ability to use licenses flexibly across any cloud without penalty. “If you lock in a multi‑year deal today that doesn’t account for DMA compliance, you’re essentially buying a litigation waiting to happen,” warns competition lawyer Moira McLennan of Clifford Chance.

3. Pilot Multi‑Cloud Architectures – Even if full‑scale multi‑cloud is not yet on the agenda, start a pilot project that uses containerization (Kubernetes) and open‑source databases to run a non‑critical application across AWS and Azure. This will build internal expertise and reveal integration gaps that will be easier to close once the gatekeeper APIs become available.

4. Demand Transparency on Egress Costs – Although the DMA will forbid egress fees for data portability, it does not cover all scenarios. Enterprises should immediately request detailed breakdowns of their monthly cloud bills, separating egress costs to understand the potential savings and to have a baseline for future negotiations.

5. Join the Compliance Conversation – The Commission has promised a 16‑week public consultation once formal proceedings open. Large enterprises that use both platforms should consider submitting evidence of lock‑in and restrictive practices; anonymized case studies from credible end‑users carry immense weight in Brussels.

The Broader Cloud Market Impact

Beyond the immediate effects on AWS and Azure, today’s decision signals that no digital market is too specialized to escape the DMA’s reach. Google Cloud Platform, which holds roughly 10% of the European market, is unlikely to be designated for now, but the rules of fair play that will be imposed on the leaders will de facto benefit it—and other challengers like OVHcloud, Deutsche Telekom’s Open Telekom Cloud, and Scaleway. Many of these smaller providers have already adapted their platforms to consume standardized APIs; the new interoperability mandates could make them drop‑in replacements for certain workloads.

The Commission is also reportedly investigating Oracle Cloud and SAP’s business cloud offerings under the same gatekeeper framework, though no preliminary findings have been issued. Should those companies eventually be designated, the combined effect would be a complete restructuring of enterprise software licensing. “We are moving toward a world where the customer—not the vendor—decides where and how to run software,” said McLennan. “It’s the biggest shift since the client‑server revolution.”

For Windows shops in particular, the interplay between Azure and on‑premises Windows Server environments will become a test case. The DMA could require Microsoft to provide the same management tools, security patches, and support for virtualized Windows instances on AWS, Google Cloud, and even private data centers as it does for Azure VMs. That would fundamentally alter the Windows Server ecosystem, which today is heavily tilted toward Azure through Hyper‑V and Azure Arc integrations.

Conclusion

The preliminary designation of AWS and Azure as gatekeepers under the DMA represents a watershed moment for enterprise IT. It thrusts cloud architecture decisions—long the domain of cost optimization and technical fit—squarely into the realm of regulatory compliance. For a generation of IT leaders who have grown accustomed to the convenience of tightly integrated cloud services, the coming year will demand a new mindset: one that values portability, open standards, and strategic independence above all.

As the Commission’s investigation moves toward a final decision, enterprises that begin preparing now will not only reduce their exposure to potential non‑compliance but also position themselves to exploit the new cloud landscape long before their competitors. The message from Brussels is unmistakable: the cloud is no longer an unregulated frontier. The era of gatekeeper dominance is drawing to a close.