Breaking the Egress Barrier
In a groundbreaking move, Microsoft has joined the ranks of its cloud competitors AWS and Google by announcing that it will no longer charge business customers for transferring data out of its Azure cloud infrastructure. This voluntary decision, according to Microsoft, demonstrates their commitment to customer choice. However, given the quiet announcement through a short blog post, it may also signal other motivations. Either way, this move aligns with the upcoming European Data Act, designed to promote competition by facilitating the switch between cloud providers.
The Triopoly Reigns
As one of the three dominant players in the public cloud market, Azure holds a significant share behind frontrunner AWS and Google. This past January, Google announced its elimination of egress fees, followed by AWS earlier this month.
“Cloud Exit Fees: The Data Dilemma”
At the crux of the issue, according to customers and regulators, is the fact that while tech giants offer free ingestion of data into their clouds, they charge for egress fees to transfer data out to other providers or in-house infrastructure. Such fees can make leaving a cloud provider cost-prohibitive.
A Step Closer to Customer Satisfaction
To address the concerns raised by customers, Microsoft previously allowed for a monthly 100GB of free data transfer out of Azure. While this may benefit organizations looking to process or analyze some data in-house or on third-party infrastructure, it falls short for those wishing to move all their data off Azure. The recent announcement works towards closing this gap for exiting customers.
Not Without Caveats
Despite the positive change, Microsoft’s egress fee elimination has not gone without criticism. One major caveat is that it only applies to customers completely discontinuing their use of Azure. In addition, the customer must cancel all Azure subscriptions before becoming eligible for a rebate on egress fees. For businesses hoping to adopt a multi- or hybrid-cloud strategy that includes Azure, egress fees will still apply once the 100GB monthly limit has been reached.
“What About Multi-Cloud Needs?”
Mark Boost, CEO of U.K.-based cloud computing services company Civo, articulated his concern to TechCrunch: “There is no flexibility here to support the multi-cloud needs of modern businesses.” While Microsoft may be taking a step towards the new Data Act, their blog post fails to mention that the elimination of egress fees only applies to storage data, leaving fees intact for transferring data from other Azure services such as the Azure Content Delivery Network (CDN).
Misleading Transformation?
In light of recent moves by Big Tech to abolish egress fees, there is suspicion that their intentions may not be entirely altruistic. According to Boost, “Clearly in the mind of the hyperscalers, flexibility still comes at a price.” Only time will tell if this is a true transformation in customer loyalty or merely a strategic adaptation to keep up with the competition.
