Microsoft’s president says will address cloud computing complaints

Microsoft, which had been fined a total 1.6 billion euros ($1.7 billion) by EU antitrust regulators in the previous decade, will address competition complaints about its cloud computing services, its president Brad Smith said on Wednesday.

The company will make some changes, marking the first step to allaying the concerns, Smith told a conference organised by think tank Bruegel in Brussels.

Microsoft wants to listen and act on the complaints, he said. “It really starts by giving more options to European cloud providers. So if there’s a company that has a data center but wants to run solutions in its cloud PBX data center, we’re creating more options for them to do so with our software, because that’s what they’ve been asking for,” he said.

Smith said the changes include allowing cloud service providers to offer Windows as a complete deskstop operating system, providing longer-term price protection and revising licensing terms.

The company found itself on the EU competition enforcer’s radar again after German software provider Next Cloud, France’s OVH cloud and two other companies filed complaints about Microsoft’s cloud practices.