Broadcom Doubles Down on Harm to European Cloud, and SAP Extends Unfair Licensing Behaviour

Snippet of CISPE press release issued on 15 September 2026

Broadcom continues to extend practices that limit choice, raise costs and lock in customers whilst destroying the economic viability of many European cloud providers’ business models. As such, its Red status – denoting a critical situation with little or insufficient progress in addressing concerns – is reconfirmed. The Fourth ECCO Report details that Broadcom has:

• Excluded the vast majority of European CSPs from offering VMware services under any terms;

• Removed end customers’ Bring Your Own License (‘BYOL’) rights, restricting them to Broadcom’s own choice of a few hand-picked partners to host their workloads;

• Imposed relentless unilateral contractual changes and cost increases that are driving European CSPs out of the market.

Meanwhile, Broadcom is waging ‘lawfare’ to obstruct investigations of its practices, including denying European Commission access to critical documents, whilst using marketing and PR to cast itself as a champion of European cloud and sovereignty.

Recent licence changes at SAP have also raised concerns among customers and competitors in Europe, several of which the Fourth ECCO report details. ECCO has given SAP an Amber Status indicating that more must be done to protect choice and fair software licensing in Europe. Its concerns fall into two main areas:

Anticompetitive licensing measures that direct customers to SAP’s own cloud offers to the detriment of independent European cloud vendors; and,

Emerging concerns over restrictions to agentic AI data access.

Read the full press release at https://www.cispe.cloud/broadcom-doubles-down-on-harm-to-european-cloud-and-sap-extends-unfair-licensing-behaviour/