Key takeaways
• We're excited about the future of cloud computing in the UK and the role that AI will play in transforming how businesses operate and innovate.
• Today, we are announcing a new UK Addendum that formalises our commitment to customer choice through clear, comprehensive rights around multicloud adoption, data portability, and switching processes.
• Through ongoing engagement with the CMA and UK customers, we’ll continue to deliver the tools, services, and flexibility that UK businesses are using to thrive.
• Today, we are announcing a new UK Addendum that formalises our commitment to customer choice through clear, comprehensive rights around multicloud adoption, data portability, and switching processes.
• Through ongoing engagement with the CMA and UK customers, we’ll continue to deliver the tools, services, and flexibility that UK businesses are using to thrive.
Over several years, we’ve worked closely with the Competition and Markets Authority as they examined competition for UK cloud services. We welcomed the opportunity to show that we are delivering competition, innovation, and value for UK customers and the broader UK innovation economy.
Given the growth and dynamism of the technology sector, particularly as AI transforms it and the broader economy, we were disappointed when the CMA’s Final Report recommended that AWS be designated under the UK’s Digital Markets regime. But the CMA made clear they would continue their thorough review so that the CMA Board’s prioritisation decision accurately reflected the industry’s dynamism and secured its benefits for the UK. They continued to engage deeply to identify any potential constraint to rapid innovation and access to cutting-edge technology. We embraced that path, leading to an additional period of close engagement that has been both productive and transparent.
In addition to addressing broader industry trends and technological developments, the CMA has used this engagement to examine valuable feedback from cloud customers throughout the UK, as well as companies across the broader industry. This process ensures that UK customers benefit fully from the very best the industry has to offer. With AI fundamentally changing the way customers engage with technology services, this engagement has delivered deeper insight and clarity about solutions that address customer feedback and foster continued vibrant competition and innovation.
As a direct result of this engagement, today we are announcing a new UK Addendum that formalises our commitment to customer choice through clear, comprehensive rights around multicloud adoption, data portability, and switching processes. We have also agreed to continued, structured engagement with the CMA as we support their efforts to ensure the cloud continues to power the UK’s thriving innovation economy for years to come.
What we’re building for UK customers
The cloud industry thrives when customers can freely choose the best solutions for their needs, combine technologies from multiple providers, and move workloads efficiently. Our UK Addendum reinforces our commitment to reducing fees and technical obstacles to interoperability and fostering a cloud that empowers customer choice and flexibility.
Here are just some of the steps we’ve taken toward that vision, informed by our engagement with the CMA and our focus on UK customers and the UK innovation economy:
Supporting emerging interoperability standards. As new AI technologies have emerged, we’ve supported emerging interoperability protocols, such as the Model Context Protocol (MCP), which enables AI applications to securely connect with data sources across different systems, and Agent-to-Agent protocol (A2A) which enable standardised communication between AI agents across different providers. We've joined the MCP steering committee and collaborated with other framework developers because we believe open standards benefit everyone — customers, developers, and the industry.
Enabling easier data transfer across clouds. We announced AWS Interconnect multicloud in November 2025, allowing customers to transfer data between cloud service providers through dedicated private connections at a flat price, no data transfer fees, and with a free tier, when it reaches general availability. The service will be available from our London Region at launch; we are committed to expanding the service’s coverage and will provide regular updates on partnerships with new cloud providers and geographic availability.
Simplifying multicloud identity management. We’ve also introduced AWS IAM Outbound Identity Federation which enables customers to federate their AWS identities to external services using tokens. This means that customers don’t need to configure their credentials every time when using external services. This simplifies secure multicloud solutions.
Enhancing multicloud security. Upcoming updates to AWS Security Hub will enhance multicloud capabilities, using a common data layer designed to unify security signals from any environment. We’ll announce additional multicloud management options throughout 2026.
Streamlining AI agent development and interoperability. Strands Agents, AWS-developed open-source AI SDKs, further simplify the development process for AI agents by allowing them to easily communicate with each other in just a few lines of code.
A constructive path forward
The CMA’s engagement through its Digital Markets regime has brought essential industry expertise and understanding, aligning with our commitment to deliver best-in-class outcomes for UK customers and the UK innovation economy.
We’ve committed to continued engagement to help achieve those goals. As part of that commitment, we will:
• Regularly report on trends we are seeing in technological development and how customers are adopting and using our services, including those designed to facilitate switching and multicloud;
• Share updates on services and features that advance customer choice and flexibility, while lowering fees or technical obstacles to interoperability, including our response to services feedback and feature requests from AWS’s customers;
• Work with the CMA as they present the views of UK organisations about their experience of cloud services, and collaborate on solutions to specific technical obstacles to interoperability that are identified through the CMA’s engagement with those customers;
• Assess relevant regulatory developments in other parts of the world, working with the CMA to determine their applicability to UK customers.
• Share updates on services and features that advance customer choice and flexibility, while lowering fees or technical obstacles to interoperability, including our response to services feedback and feature requests from AWS’s customers;
• Work with the CMA as they present the views of UK organisations about their experience of cloud services, and collaborate on solutions to specific technical obstacles to interoperability that are identified through the CMA’s engagement with those customers;
• Assess relevant regulatory developments in other parts of the world, working with the CMA to determine their applicability to UK customers.
For example, as we continue engaging with the European Commission as it develops cloud interoperability standards, we’ll work closely with the CMA to identify where UK customers can benefit from the outcomes of that process.
We’re confident in the benefits our continued engagement with the CMA will provide. We’ll keep UK customers informed as this work progresses, and we’ll publish any further changes to enhance customers’ ability to switch or adopt multicloud strategies. We embrace direct customer feedback as a key tool for continued innovation, and this process will facilitate the CMA’s continued close scrutiny of this industry and provide a direct channel to raise potential concerns or reassess our status under the Digital Markets regime.
Our focus remains unchanged: empowering choice, fostering flexibility, and competing vigorously to earn customer trust every single day. We're excited about the future of cloud computing in the UK and the role that AI will play in transforming how businesses operate and innovate. Through continued engagement with the CMA and UK customers, we’ll deliver the tools, services, and flexibility that UK businesses need to thrive. We look forward to building that future together.
