The investigation will address the supply of public cloud infrastructure services in the UK.

The CMA will look at the market dominance of cloud ‘hyperscalers’, namely Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft’s Azure, which together hold approximately 60 to 70 per cent of the cloud services market share. Google is their closest competitor with a share of somewhere between 5 and 10 per cent.

“Many businesses now completely rely on cloud services, making effective competition in this market essential,” said CMA chief executive Sarah Cardell. “The CMA’s independent inquiry group will now carry out an investigation to determine whether competition in this market is working well and, if not, what action should be taken to address any issues it finds.”

The watchdog’s probe follows Ofcom’s market study, in which the regulator identified a number of features in the supply of cloud services that make it more difficult for customers to use multiple cloud suppliers...