Amazon rejects the idea that it traps customers on its platform, saying it has a 'much lower amount of lock-in' than Oracle or Microsoft

• Amazon rejected a veteran antitrust lawyer's view that Amazon Web Services locks in clients to its platform.
• Amazon was responding to Silicon Valley lawyer Gary Reback, who has led high profile antitrust battles against Microsoft, Google and Oracle.
• Amazon said its clients have access to many options. In fact, Amazon argues, its platform offers more options to clients compared to products from rivals like Oracle or Microsoft.
• Cloud infrastructure companies like AWS "have much lower amount of lock-in than software from companies like Oracle or Microsoft," Amazon told Business Insider.
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Amazon is the big gorilla in the cloud, but the tech giant is denying a respected antitrust lawyer's claim that it is unfairly locking in clients to its platform.

In fact, Amazon argues, its cloud platform offers more options to clients compared to products from rivals like Oracle or Microsoft.

Amazon was responding to the view of Gary Reback, the renowned Silicon Valley lawyer who led high profile antitrust battles against Microsoft, Google and Oracle, that the company is expanding its platform in a way that locks in customers to its platform.

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Amazon rejected that view, saying customers of Amazon Web Services have many options to choose from.

"Customers have had many choices for who they choose for their cloud provider for many years - and that continues to be true," an Amazon Web Services spokesperson told Business Insider in an email. "These choices are some of the biggest companies in the world, including AWS, Microsoft, Google, Oracle, and IBM."

In fact, Amazon argued, cloud infrastructure companies like AWS "have much lower amount of lock-in than software from companies like Oracle or Microsoft."

In the pre-cloud era, businesses generally set up their own in-house data centers with products from companies like Oracle and IBM, which typically charged hefty licensing and maintenance fees.

Amazon also noted that the cloud "only represents 3%" of global IT spending, with 97% of budgets still devoted to more traditional technology, including data centers and servers.

The cloud enabled businesses to set up their networks on web-based platforms run by the likes of Amazon, Microsoft and Google. This allowed businesses to scale down or even abandon private data centers.

While cloud spending is still small compared to the overall enterprise IT market, businesses have been moving their networks to the cloud at an increasingly fast rate. Amazon controls roughly 50% of the cloud infrastructure market, followed by Microsoft, Alibaba and Google, according to Gartner.

Reback argued that Amazon's market share, as reported by research firms like Gartner, understate its control over the market. He cited Amazon's strong grip in the startup world, where most companies rely on its services to launch their products.

"The true market power is much higher," he told Business Insider. "The law looks at market power. It doesn't look at market share."

The tit-for-tat between Reback and Amazon appears to offer a glimpse of how an antitrust dispute could play out.

Reback told Business Insider that the Federal Trade Commission has reached out to Amazon's cloud rivals in what could be the start of an antitrust inquiry. He called a possible antitrust battle over Amazon's dominant cloud presence the next "big fight" in tech.

The FTC had declined to comment.

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