CISPE's European Cloud Competition Observatory (ECCO) has awarded Microsoft a "green" status in its third report.

In its latest assessment of cloud competition in the European market, ECCO has praised Microsoft's efforts to reform its licensing practices after the cloud giant received "amber" for two consecutive reviews by the board.

While Microsoft is out of the naughty chair, Broadcom was again awarded "red," with ECCO accusing the company of worsening anti-competitive practices.

ECCO was formed in the aftermath of the July 2024 settlement between Microsoft and CISPE for an antitrust complaint that argued that the company's contracts were harming the European cloud computing market.

It was set up to monitor the progress of Microsoft's commitments to enable CISPE's members to run Microsoft software on their platforms at equivalent prices to Microsoft's, as well as to monitor competition across the market.

After Microsoft was rated amber in May 2025, when it was decided that the proposed Azure Local offering would not be able to meet the conditions, the company was given until July to offer an alternative.

This was agreed upon on July 10, 2025, with CISPE. In the latest report, the agreement is said to enable CISPE members (not including hyperscalers) to secure "a series of changes to Microsoft terms which, if delivered as set out in the agreement, will resolve many of the issues raised in its competition complaint."

CISPE currently has 38 members, and once counted Amazon Web Services among them, until the hyperscaler was removed from the board after the trade association changed its rules to exclude non-European cloud vendors with annual revenues above $10bn.

The report added: "ECCO will continue to monitor Microsoft’s progress in delivering the promised features to CISPE members and, in addition, Microsoft has also agreed to assess the effectiveness of these changes with a view to extending them to all European cloud providers."

It further notes that this does not cover bundling strategies nor the integration of AI capabilities with software or cloud.

The changes include giving CISPE members access to Pay-As-You-Go licensing for Windows Server and SQL Server at Azure-comparable rates, the ability to deploy Microsoft 365 on local cloud infrastructure for sovereignty purposes, and ISPE members can now host Microsoft workloads as pay-as-you-go for their customers on independent European infrastructure with additional privacy guardrails.

While Microsoft is out of the dog house, Broadcom was yet again awarded a red, with ECCO writing: "The situation for market parties globally with Broadcom has only deteriorated with significant new forms of unfair licensing behavior being imposed by Broadcom on European cloud providers and their customers."

As a result, CISPE has actually filed for annulment of the Broadcom VMware deal, challenging a 2023 decision by the European Commission.

SAP and Citrix were also challenged in the report, though they have yet to receive a rating from ECCO.

Francisco Mingorance, secretary general of CISPE, said: “The work of ECCO has never been more important. Although progress with Microsoft shows that open and honest negotiation can lead to results, an increasing number of large software providers seem set on inflicting unfair licensing terms that effectively lock in customers and lock out European cloud service providers. These anti-competitive behaviors must be challenged at every turn.”