Ensuring competition in the clouds: the role of competition law?

摘要

This article examines the potential applicability of competition law to the cloud computing sector, as well as assessing its suitability as a regulatory regime. It then considers alternative legal mechanisms, specifically measures to promote open standards and interoperability in the context of public procurement, as well as a data portability right as a demand-side measure. Despite being early days, the article argues that these latter mechanisms are likely to have a more significant impact on competition in the cloud computing sector than intervention using traditional competition measures.