The Bank of England has trebled the amount it is spending on its Oracle systems integrator amid efforts to migrate business applications to the cloud.

The UK’s central bank has planned the move since 2020, and a recent procurement note revealed it has increased financial outlay with Oracle implementation partner Version 1 to £21.5 million after initially tendering the contract for £7 million.

Version 1 was hired to “support the implementation of technical and change management aspects of the Oracle Cloud implementation and business change program,” according to the official documents.

The latest increase is due to an amendment to the Bank’s Application Management Service contract, including the “need for additional works, services or supplies” that “were not included in the initial procurement,” the notice says.

Another supplier could not meet these requirements for “economic or technical reasons such as requirements of interchangeability or interoperability with existing equipment, services or installations.” Any change in supplier might also “cause significant inconvenience or substantial duplication of costs,” it adds.

The latest increase is the second time the 330-year-old institution has upped the contract value. The procurement was first advertised for £7 million in 2022, and, after a competition, it was awarded to Version 1 for £8.7 million in September 2023.

In February last year, that figure was inflated to £13.8 million, with the bulk of the increase attributed to “amended implementation methodology, from a two-phase approach, to a multiple-phase approach with Oracle Modules going live based on the Bank’s priorities.”

At the time, a spokesperson said: “The Bank is implementing Oracle Cloud to consolidate several different systems which will help the Bank fulfil its mission. We aim to achieve value for money in all our procurement.”

The Bank of England is a public body that raises money regulating institutions, printing banknotes, banking services, management fees charged to government agencies, and investments built up over 300 years. It generates more income than it spends and contributes millions of pounds to the UK Treasury.

According to training provider Fudgelearn, the Bank of England is implementing Oracle Cloud SaaS Fusion Applications, including Finance, Procurement, Projects, Expenses, EPM, and Reporting.

The contract is “intended to deliver a step change in the capabilities and value delivered by the finance, procurement and recruitment functions in the Bank, leveraging the existing Oracle Cloud tool set to drive sustainable business change.”

Last week, the bank also awarded Oracle a £13 million contract to provide technical support for Oracle SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS.

In June 2025, the BoE said it would increase the maximum spending of a framework deal for a raft of services, including support for its complex configuration of SAP, “in particular Business Warehouse” and interoperability between multi-cloud environments and on-prem and shared datacenters. The maximum value of the arrangement was set at £60 million when it was awarded in September 2024. It was then increased to £86.7 million in a non-competitive award.

2026 has begun with the familiar sound of Microsoft’s software Grim Reaper sharpening a blade as administrators peer glumly at the calendar of carnage ahead.

Some big beasts face the chop this year. Office LTSC 2021 reaches end of the road on October 13, alongside the final Extended Security Updates for Windows Server 2012 and 2012 R2. SQL Server 2016 also transitions to Extended Security Updates.

Then there’s a raft of Azure retirements. March sees the demise of Speech to Text API v3.0, followed by Windows Server 2016 on AKS hybrid and Windows Server 2019 on AKS. Application Gateway v1 – which stopped accepting new deployments in 2024 – will be forcibly stopped on April 28, 2026.

Windows 11 Home and Pro 24H2 hit end of support on October 13, as does the veteran Microsoft Publisher, with no real replacement in sight for customers who need to dash off the odd certificate or two.

Legacy authentication services retirement might trip up administrators. From January 31, legacy client authentication will be blocked by default for SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business. The block can be lifted for a few months, but becomes permanent from May 1. The Identity Client Run Time Library (IDCRL) is on its way out.

SharePoint versions 2016 and 2019 reach the end of support on July 14, along with Project Server 2016 and 2019. SharePoint Server 2016’s demise finally allows Microsoft to kill off InfoPath 2013, kept alive solely for compatibility.

The list goes on, and serves to highlight that while 2025 marked the end for most Windows 10 versions, 2026’s retirement roster is equally demanding of administrator attention and planning.

Microsoft has given ample notice, but many enterprises tend to operate on a basis of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”, particularly if a fix requires handing cash to Microsoft and its partners. Administrators would be wise to take a long look at 2026’s farewells and plan accordingly.

Cloud and software-as-a-service (SaaS) security leaders are heading into 2026 with a blunt warning about attackers and outages converging in cloud ecosystems.

Experts predict a continued rise in cloud-native intrusions, with ransomware groups targeting platforms like Microsoft 365 directly and using cloud footholds to pivot into on-prem environments.

At the same time, many security professionals expect third-party SaaS supply chains to become the primary entry point for breaches, as threat actors exploit the sprawling web of integrations and dependencies that most organisations struggle to inventory.

Brazil’s Council for Economic Defense (CADE) has officially launched an “Administrative Inquiry” into Microsoft’s cloud computing and software licensing practices.

As reported by Valor Economico, the investigation commenced at the start of this year.

In a technical note shared by CADE on January 2, the department noted that the investigation is based on the recent findings of the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), which concluded that “the licensing practices adopted by Microsoft have produced significant negative effects on the competitive capacity of its rivals, mainly Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google, to offer cloud computing services, especially in the segment of clients whose workloads depend on Microsoft software as an ‘essential input.'”

CADE adds that while the CMA’s investigation focused on the European economic area and the UK, the “possibility of the same reality occurring in Brazil must be investigated.”

“It is observed that the enterprise software and cloud computing markets exhibit globalised dynamics, with homogeneous technical standards, business models, and supply structures across jurisdictions. Microsoft, AWS, and Google Cloud operate in Brazil with global licensing policies, technological architecture, and commercial strategies similar to those analysed by the CMA. Thus, restrictive practices identified in the United Kingdom tend to be replicated in the Brazilian market, reproducing similar anti-competitive effects.”

The CMA’s investigation concluded in July of this year, finding that both AWS and Microsoft merited further investigation into whether they hold “strategic market status.” Those SMS probes were previously said to be expected to conclude in early 2026.

With CADE deciding to begin the probe, Microsoft has until January 12 to answer a questionnaire setting out various details of its current licensing practices.

The CMA investigation is not the sole investigation Microsoft has faced. Cloud Infrastructure Service Providers in Europe (CISPE) previously launched a probe into the company, though this has since been resolved. In the US, the company is seeing similar discussions with the Federal Trade Commission.

Microsoft operates two cloud regions in Brazil: one in Rio and another in São Paulo. In September 2024, the company said it would invest $2.7bn in expanding its cloud infrastructure in the country.

Microsoft is fighting a massive £2.1 billion lawsuit in the UK that accuses the tech giant of using its Windows Server software to tilt the cloud computing market in its favour. The case, which could reshape how software licensing works in the cloud era, alleges Microsoft has been systematically overcharging thousands of British businesses that run Windows Server on rival platforms like Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Alibaba Cloud.

The lawsuit landed at London’s Competition Appeal Tribunal this week, with competition lawyer Maria Luisa Stasi arguing on behalf of nearly 60,000 businesses that Microsoft’s pricing practices create an uneven playing field. According to court filings, companies using Windows Server on competing cloud services face higher licensing fees than those running the same software on Microsoft’s own Azure platform. That’s not exactly subtle, it’s like charging more for gasoline if you’re not filling up at the company’s own stations.

Here’s the thing: Stasi’s legal team claims this isn’t just about pricing. They argue Microsoft intentionally “degrades the user experience of Windows Server” on rival clouds as part of what they call “a coherent abusive strategy to leverage Microsoft’s dominant position.”

Microsoft, unsurprisingly, wants the case thrown out. The company argues that Stasi’s legal team hasn’t provided a proper framework for calculating alleged losses and maintains that its vertically integrated business model – where it both licenses Windows Server to competitors and uses it as a foundation for Azure, actually benefits competition. A Microsoft spokesperson reportedly pointed to what they called “the reality of a sector that has never been so dynamic and competitive.”

This legal battle comes at an awkward time for Microsoft, which just announced a $23 billion global investment plan earlier this week to expand its cloud and AI infrastructure. The company’s cloud business has been growing rapidly, with Azure competing fiercely against AWS and Google Cloud in a market that generated $90 billion in revenue just in the fourth quarter of 2024.

Regulators on both sides of the Atlantic have been watching Microsoft’s cloud practices closely. Back in July, Britain’s Competition and Markets Authority released a report concluding that Microsoft’s licensing rules “materially disadvantaged AWS and Google” by making it more costly or less efficient for customers to run key software elsewhere. European regulators have also been examining whether cloud giants have amassed too much influence, with concerns ranging from data portability to restrictive licensing.

At £2.1 billion (about $2.8 billion), it represents a significant collective action against a tech company in the UK. And it arrives as cloud computing transitions from being a nice-to-have utility to the essential infrastructure powering everything from AI development to enterprise software.

If the tribunal allows the case to proceed, it could force Microsoft to fundamentally rethink how it licenses Windows Server in cloud environments. More broadly, it might set precedents for how dominant software companies can leverage their existing products to gain advantage in new markets. For the thousands of UK businesses caught in the middle, the outcome could mean huge refunds or confirmation that they’ll need to factor these pricing disparities into their cloud strategy moving forward.

The hearing continues at the Competition Appeal Tribunal, with a decision on whether to certify the case expected in the coming weeks. Either way, the cloud computing wars just got a lot more expensive.

Google has dropped an antitrust complaint that it filed in the European Union last year over Microsoft’s business practices.

The development comes a few days after the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, launched an antitrust probe into Microsoft. The investigation will scrutinise the company’s conduct in the public cloud market, which was also the focus of Google’s antitrust complaint.

Microsoft sells a version of Windows called Windows Server that is optimised for public cloud environments. Many enterprises use it to run Microsoft applications such as SQL Server. In 2019, the tech giant rolled out a major update to its terms of service for Windows Server installations that run on competing clouds.

Google’s antitrust complaint argued that the 2019 licensing change was anticompetitive. According to the company, the update made it more expensive to run Windows Server on Google Cloud than on Microsoft’s own Azure cloud platform. The search giant cited research that found the revised terms of service cost EU businesses more than €1 billion.

Google also flagged other issues to EU regulators. According to the search giant’s complaint, Microsoft limited customers’ access to Windows Server patches on competing clouds and created interoperability obstacles.

“Today, we are withdrawing it in light of the recent announcement that the EC will ​assess problematic practices affecting the cloud sector under a separate process,”‌ stated Giorgia Abeltino, the head of government affairs and public policy for Google Cloud Europe. “We continue to work with policymakers, customers, and regulators across the EU, the U.K., and elsewhere to advocate for choice and openness in the cloud ⁠market.”

The Microsoft probe that EU officials opened last week will seek to determine whether Azure qualifies as a core platform service under the bloc’s DMA law. The DMA, or Digital Markets Act, is a piece of antitrust legislation that went into effect in 2022. Products that are designated as a core platform service are subject to stricter regulatory requirements.

One DMA clause specifies that core platform services must provide a simple way for users to move their data to other platforms. If regulators apply that requirement to Azure, Microsoft may have to make technical changes to its data export tools. Many of the other requirements set forth in the DMA focus on consumer products such as mobile operating systems, which means they likely wouldn’t affect Azure.

The Microsoft probe is one of three investigations into the public cloud market that the EU announced last week. Officials will also seek to determine whether Amazon Web Services qualifies as a core platform service. Additionally, the European Commission will study whether the DMA should be modified to better address antitrust concerns in the cloud market.