Broadcom appears firmly in the crosshairs of European antitrust watchdogs, with European Union (EU) officials reportedly grilling cloud providers impacted by sweeping licensing changes.

Bloomberg reports that European cloud firms are being subject to questions from antitrust officials on the importance of VMware offerings and to what extent they could be easily replaced. Cloud service providers are also reportedly being asked for any new certification arrangements they might deem “unfair.”

Should the commission eventually decide to escalate the matter, it could launch a formal investigation or intervene more quickly with the option of imposing so-called “interim measures” – temporary orders that can only be implemented in the event officials find immediate risk of serious and irreparable damage to competition. These include ordering companies to pause at-issue practices for a short time.

Such measures, though, are rarely used, and in the event they ever are, legal challenges can be brought by the affected company, further slowing the process. Companies found to breach EU antitrust laws can be hit by fines of up to 10% of their global annual revenue, though such instances are few and far between.

Since its $61 billion takeover of VMware closed in late November 2023, Broadcom has instigated sweeping changes, many of which have caused consternation among some customers.

Ripping up perpetual license offerings to create subscription-based mass bundles resulted in customers purchasing subscriptions to services they don’t need just to access the ones they do.

Broadcom has also shuttered the Advantage Partner Program for VMware Cloud Service Providers (VCSP), replacing it with an invite-only system. The White Label model, which allowed smaller cloud service providers to work through Pinnacle or Premier partners, was also retired. And just last week, Broadcom pulled the plug on a software kit that allowed rivals to migrate virtual machines away from VMware.

Customer consternation has seen a considerable number of VMware users jump ship, much to the delight of Nutanix, Red Hat, and even some hyperscalers.

Broadcom, though, has consistently been defiant, maintaining an uncompromising stance amid VMware related-legal spats with disgruntled ex’s like Tesco, Siemens, and more recently, T-Mobile US.

CEO Hock Tan previously proudly proclaimed that more than 90% of VMware’s 10,000 largest customers have signed up for the vendor’s Cloud Foundation (VCF) platform. At the company’s recent Explore event in Las Vegas, chief product officer Paul Turner tried to paint the private cloud offering as a means to better manage surging token costs.

That hasn’t stopped Broadcom from being painted as public enemy No. 1 by the Cloud Infrastructure Service Providers in Europe (CISPE). The group took issue with the shuttering of VCSP, filing a complaint with the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Competition alleging that it would force many European communication service providers to exit the market.

Broadcom also recently lost out in a fight with EU antitrust regulators over access to documents it contended were covered by American legal professional privilege. The EU General Court sided with the bloc’s regulators, however, finding that “it is for the commission to decide whether a particular item of information is necessary to enable it to bring to light an infringement of the EU competition rules.”