A leading European cloud trade group called out Broadcom over its recent licensing changes, as well as criticizing the European Union for its cloud sovereignty efforts.

The Cloud Infrastructure Services Providers in Europe (CISPE) released its third European Cloud Competition Observatory (ECCO) report this week in its latest bid to tackle “unfair software licensing conditions that hamper growth and development” of the continent’s cloud industry.

The report criticized Broadcom for what it saw as anticompetitive pricing in the wake of its VMware acquisition, which has seen users affected by migration issues and reported price increases in the last year.

CISPE wrote the Broadcom situation had accordingly “only deteriorated with significant new forms of unfair licensing behavior” imposed by the firm on European cloud vendors and their customers.

The organization claimed to have contacted Broadcom in the last quarter for a resolution through various demands, including end-customer privacy, better support and channel program access for smaller cloud service providers (CSPs), as well as improved flexibility for larger CSPs.

Broadcom was also asked to guarantee a minimum six-month notice in clear terms for contractual, pricing, or term changes prior to renewal, as well as addressing “the substantial total price increase resulting from forced bundling of VMware products.”

“Broadcom has refused to address any of these concerns nor the current situation, which sees many customers across Europe faced with license costs increasing by a factor of 10 or more times at renewal,” CISPE claimed.

The trade group also mentioned rumors “of a ‘kill-switch’ or ‘time-bomb’” that remotely disables or limits certain VMware functions if customers or partners do not submit usage data in Broadcom’s requested formats and deadlines.

Broadcom’s critical "red" warning in the report follows CISPE’s complaint to the EU General Court this summer over the bloc’s alleged failure to address market dominance concerns prior to Broadcom’s VMware takeover.

In a statement provided to SDxCentral in July, the firm said: “Broadcom strongly disagrees with these allegations. The European Commission, along with twelve other jurisdictions around the world, approved our acquisition of VMware following a thorough merger review process, and we will uphold the commitments made to the Commission at that time."

Following the CISPE filing, British supermarket giant Tesco and IT reseller Computacenter also filed legal claims against Broadcom over VMware licensing changes.

CISPE singles out SAP and Citrix

CISPE’s ECCO report also accused Citrix of “following some aspects of the Broadcom playbook” as it moves from a perpetual to a subscription-based licensing plan.

Enterprise tech giant SAP, meanwhile, was accused of “squeezing out European clouds” by only certifying U.S. hyperscalers Microsoft, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Google for its cloud, infrastructure, and hosting operations.

On the subject of Microsoft, CISPE gave the cloud giant a positive "green" light after an agreement made in July between the pair on lower licensing fees.

“Importantly, CISPE’s agreement with Microsoft does not cover new bundling strategies, nor the integration of AI capabilities with productivity software or cloud,” it added.

Microsoft belongs to CISPE in an exclusive non-voting category, which once included AWS before the trade association revised its admission rules to block non-European vendors with annual sales exceeding $11.6 billion.

Google, which is not a member, launched the Open Cloud Coalition last year, with similar anticompetitive concerns as CISPE.

CISPE and sovereignty

The ECCO report was released after CISPE criticized the official EU Cloud Sovereignty Framework this month, calling into question its efforts on data sovereignty for the continent.

In a blog on its website, CISPE accused the EU of “[muddying] the waters by introducing a murky ‘sovereignty score’ that … mixes unattainable goals – such as full EU control over every hardware component – with vague ideas like ‘assurances against change of control.’”

The framework was criticized for its use of weighted averages to obfuscate foreign hyperscalers’ efforts in European data protection.

“Most European cloud service providers are likely to score lower than foreign hyperscalers under this system. … The message seems to be: can’t comply with European ownership and control requirements? Never mind – make up the numbers through investment or participation in EU schemes,” the forum claimed.

CISPE suggested efforts to expand on frameworks such as Gaia-X, which promotes a federated and secure framework for sovereign data exchange, aiming to reduce dependence on the U.S. cloud giants. CISPE's suggestions included clearly distinguishing sovereign cloud and operationally resilient cloud services, building on Gaia-X’s drive toward immunity from foreign interference in the name of European sovereignty.

The drive toward European data residency has seen Cisco, SAP, SUSE, Microsoft, CISPE member OVHcloud, Exoscale, and more invest in EU-compliant solutions, as the EU Data Act kicked into gear last month to weaken vendor lock-in for Europe's cloud customers.