According to new research by data intelligence company Savanta, European customers’ freedom to choose cloud infrastructure is being limited, or even eliminated, when they want to move their workload from local productivity software (such as word processing and spreadsheet software) and on-premises IT infrastructure to the cloud.
For the report, Savanta spoke to over 1,200 IT decision-makers in five European countries (France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, and the UK) to learn about their first-hand experiences.
This includes companies of all sizes, both large and SMEs, as well as public sector organisations. Hence, the survey provides a clear picture of the actual challenges that European organisations that use productivity software face in changing cloud infrastructure providers.
According to the survey, commissioned by the Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA Europe), customers often feel they are prevented from changing Infrastructure as a Service (Iaas) cloud providers due to restrictive licensing or other activities that inhibit competition.
Indeed, four in 10 customers (40%) say they would lose discounts on their productivity software when switching cloud provider, and 40% indicate that existing licensing terms actually prohibit them from taking their on-prem software licences to another cloud vendor.
The findings of the Savanta survey also clearly support calls for EU and national competition authorities’ to examine how legacy software vendors’ licensing practices harms competition in the European IaaS market.