A very large group of companies has just asked Europe for new rules on Digital Market Actto ensure that PNRR funds are not intercepted by the usual market players: in particular, the document refers to Microsoft, Oracle e SAPreported as companies that use unfair business practices.
Microsoft, Oracle and SAP: protest over PNRR funds
The letter, addressed to Minister Colao, reads as follows:
Dear Minister Colao,
hereby, as representatives of Information Technology companies, cloud suppliers, operators in the digital sector, consumers, we wish to bring to the attention of the Italian Government and this esteemed Ministry the need to speak in the context of discussion of the Digital Markets Act (DMA), in order to tackle unfair software licensing practices that hinder the European cloud market.
Italy has a unique opportunity to include clarifications in the DMA that contrast these practices and to make the regulation a tool that truly ensures competitiveness in the cloud market, avoiding lock-in mechanisms and lack of transparency. An even more important opportunity in view of the upcoming investments by the National Recovery and Resilience Plan envisaged for the migration of public and private entities to the cloud.
To date, the DMA – in a trialogue phase between the Commission, Parliament and the European Council – does not address this issue, namely the abuse of dominant position of legacy software suppliers that implement lock-in mechanisms in their ecosystems, favoring their own offer. of cloud infrastructure.
These are dominant software providers who, by abusing the condition of economic dependence, create imbalances between rights and obligations and do not allow customers to make a free and fair choice for the provision of cloud infrastructure services.
The current European legislation does not regulate these anti-competitive practices, the hope is therefore that there may instead be a space to counter these behaviors and that Italy can bring such requests to the trialogue forum or to other appropriate fora.
Last October, in this regard, the study of Prof. Frédéric Jenny, professor of economics at the ESSEC Paris Business School and long-time President of the OECD Competition Committee was published, which showed how the suppliers of software “exploit their strong, sometimes dominant, position in various products in order to distort competition for cloud infrastructure services” and stressed the need for these practices and behaviors to be considered and added to the ex-ante requirements of gatekeepers within the law on digital markets.
In conclusion, it is necessary to intervene on DMA and providing for the addition of provisions on software licenses would mean limiting an oligopolistic practice and rapidly creating a more open and competitive digital market, in Italy and in Europe.