The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) seems to be doubling down on its investigation of Microsoft and the tech giant’s potentially shady bundling and licensing practices.

According to a Bloomberg report, the federal agency has been issuing civil investigative demands (CIDs) to companies that compete with Microsoft in the business software and cloud computing markets.

CIDs are powerful, subpoena-like mandates used by government agencies to investigate potential violations of civil law, typically before a formal complaint or lawsuit is filed.

According to inside sources, at least a half-dozen companies have received these requests, which ask a range of questions around Microsoft’s licensing and other business practices, the report said. The FTC is also seeking information on Microsoft’s bundling of AI, security, and identity software into other products, including Windows and Office.

This development is the latest in an ongoing, nearly year-and-a-half-long probe into whether the company is illegally monopolising several markets critical to modern enterprises. It also seems to indicate that the federal government is seeking evidence that Microsoft makes it difficult, more expensive, or near-impossible for companies to use Windows, Office, or other of its products on competitors’ cloud services.

“To say Microsoft is a serial offender with regard to stretching the limits of anti-trust law would be the understatement of the century,” said Scott Bickley, advisory fellow at Info-Tech Research Group. “Microsoft embodies the mantra of ‘beg forgiveness vs asking permission’ and leverages its scale to force bundled products upon its customer base.”

Concerns over changes to Oracle’s Java licensing strategy are hitting more than nine out of ten users as businesses struggle to adapt to the regime, according to research.

A study from Dimensional Research shows that 92 percent of the 2,000 respondents reported being concerned about Oracle Java pricing, up from 82 percent in the same survey last year. Those stating they were very concerned about the changes leapt from 19 percent in 2025 to 29 percent this year.

In 2023, Oracle changed its Java SE subscription model, shifting from a per-user or per-processor basis to per-employee. Critics called the move “predatory” as organisations that were using little Java but had a large number of employees could be hit hard by the cost increase.

Later that year, research from Gartner showed that costs could be between two and five times greater under the new licensing model for using the same software.

Anxiety over the new charging model is a major driver pushing Java users to look for alternatives. Eighty-one percent of users have migrated, are migrating, or plan to migrate all or some of their Oracle Java to an open source alternative, according to the survey of global tech pros.

A number of alternatives to Oracle exist for running OpenJDK applications in production, including Bellsoft Liberica, IBM Semeru, and Azul Platform Core. Concern over the licensing change continues to spike because awareness is still filtering through the user community, said Gil Tene, CTO and co-founder of Java support and technology provider Azul Systems, which commissioned the research.

“For most of them, the way they find out is a conversation with an Oracle salesperson, and that conversation starts at some place in the organisation, but then it takes a while for that to make it through the organisation, to the people actually looking at financial implications and the budget.”

Tene said the users were also waking up to the fact that a strategy to gradually move off Oracle Java does not solve the licensing problem.

“The shift that happened about a little under three years ago is that they went from volume-based to employee-based pricing. It’s enough for one employee in the company to use one copy of Java from Oracle, for the company to be on the hook for paying per employee, for the entire employee base,” he claimed.

A separate study from Dimensional Research published last year found that 73 percent of Oracle Java users had been audited in the last three years.

Another pressure on Java costs has been the shift to the cloud. The latest Dimensional Research data shows 97 percent of participants have taken actions to reduce their public cloud costs, including using a high-performance Java platform (41 percent). However, 74 percent of organisations say they still have more than 20 percent unused compute capacity in their public cloud environments.

VMware appears to have won an early procedural victory in its lawsuit against Siemens. The judge ruled in favour of VMware’s position that the US court has jurisdiction, despite Siemens’s request to move the case to Germany.

The case began in March 2025, when VMware discovered that Siemens’s US branch had provided a list of software that included many more products than had been licensed. VMware sued Siemens because, according to VMware, the industrial group refused to cooperate with a license audit and demanded that VMware provide extended product support for potentially unlicensed software.

Siemens referred to contracts that, according to the company, stipulate that disputes must be heard in German courts. VMware, on the other hand, argued that the alleged use of unlicensed software occurred in the US, giving US courts proper jurisdiction.

On Tuesday, Judge D. Hatcher of the Delaware District Court indicated her support for VMware’s argument. She published a Report and Recommendation stating that Siemens’s attempt to move the case to Germany should be rejected.

Such reports indicate the logic and precedents that are likely to influence a future decision. Both parties have 14 days to file objections, but those submissions are limited to ten pages. This restriction is intended to force those involved in the lawsuit to focus on the issues in the report rather than exploring new arguments.

The lawsuit against Siemens is not an isolated incident. Broadcom has intensified its VMware license audits since the acquisition. The company moved away from perpetual licenses and is forcing customers to switch to expensive subscription bundles. This has led to tensions with several large organisations.

For VMware, the case against Siemens appears to be proceeding in the desired court for now. The virtualisation giant can now continue to litigate in the US over the alleged use of unlicensed software. Whether Siemens will still object to the judge’s recommendation will become clear in the next two weeks.