AWS sales boss claims Microsoft's softened cloud licensing regime is a sham

A senior exec at Amazon Web Services has accused Microsoft of making cosmetic licence changes to appease regulators, but continuing to ensure its wares are more expensive when run in rivals' clouds. Matt Garman, a senior vice president for sales and market at AWS took to LinkedIn to share his opinion that "Customers and policy …

[cjcox]

Battle of the bottom feeders?

Not sure I'd lift up either company as being "ethical".

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this the same company that shafts sellers not using Amazon logistics?

I know that being on the receiving end of anti-competition behaviours is worse than being at the other end...

Moreover they are angry they can't take advantage of Microsoft closed source application like they do with open source software...

[Cuddles]

How many wrongs make a right?

Amazon does plenty of things wrong themselves, but that doesn't mean they're wrong to call out Microsoft's anticompetitive behaviour. Sure, they're only upset because it harms their own business, but if MS is continuing bad behaviour that's already been taken to the European Commission, it shouldn't really matter who happens to be complaining about it this time.

Plus it's also worth noting that it's not really the same company that shafts sellers. Sure, technically it's all Amazon, but there's essentially no connection between AWS and Amazon retail other than happening to both have Bezos at the top. At least as far as I'm aware, almost all the really bad behaviour comes from Amazon's retail and logistics. I doubt AWS is staffed entirely by angels, but at least they don't seem to be any worse than any other company of a similar size.

[Anonymous Coward]

"This is not fairness in licensing and is not what customers want."

Very honest about "cloud" rental software.

[TVU]

"AWS sales boss claims Microsoft's softened cloud licensing regime is a sham"

Matt Garman ought to stop whining and bleating and he should instead concentrate on actually making AWS more price competitive.

[Anonymous Coward]

Cloud Desktops

There's a valid concern over MSFT Licensing restrictions when looking at enterprise cloud hosted desktops. BYOL, Windows Server OS SPLA, O365 License Restrictions running "locally", etc.

The AWS chap has good points.

[Stu J]

Re: Cloud Desktops

100% this - Microsoft has always artificially restricted innovation and shut down competition when it came to virtual desktop licensing on shared infrastructure, even as far back as XP. Their sharp practices have only become further entrenched as Azure gained enough traction.

[Rgen]

Microsoft licensing

Microsoft licensing is properly the worst in the world. It is designed to confused people so they just give in. Buy everything

[43300]

Re: Microsoft licensing

It's getting worse as well, and they are adding multiple tiers of licensing requirements =. E.g. Azure Stack HCI, where you have to license CPU alocations to run your own workload on your own hardware, in addition to licensing whatever OS runs in the VMs (if required - which with Windows Server it obviously is...)

[PhilipN]

That's good - the master of profit manipulation accusing the master of market manipulation

Or is it the other way round.

Over a period of (many) years any time Amazon was at risk of turning a profit Bezos would cut prices.

Back then the only way to guarantee a stratospheric share price was run at as large a loss as possible.

[cyberdemon]

Pot calls Kettle a Monopolist

Cry me a river, you both need to be broken up

[Roland6]

Those "Concessions"

No mention is made that MS would enable EU operators be price competitive, just that they will help EU operators run MS products...

Nice example of how the EU is a sufficiently large block with an antitrust watchdog who has a reputation for sinking their teeth in, for MS to sit up and do something to appease that market.