Amazon Web Services has decided to give up its board position at CISPE (Cloud Infrastructure Service Providers in Europe). The decision follows a recent change in its Articles of Association, which state that only European-based companies can serve on the board.
The new rules state that non-European cloud providers with annual revenues exceeding 10 billion euros can only participate as adherent members. That is a member organization without voting rights. The members recently adopted this change unanimously.
The board now consists of existing members Jacqueline van de Werken of Leaseweb (Netherlands), David Chassan of Outscale (France) and Lorenzo Chiriatti of Register (Italy). In addition, newly elected members Alexander Windbichler of Anexia (Austria) and Jake Madders of Hyve (UK) have joined.
“After serving on the board since CISPE’s foundation and playing a key role in establishing it as Europe’s leading cloud infrastructure trade body, AWS, Gigas and UpCloud chose not to seek re-election,” CISPE said.
AWS will remain a CISPE member, the company confirmed to The Register.
Microsoft as new member
The timing of AWS’ departure from the board is striking. It follows a few weeks after Microsoft joined CISPE as a member. According to sources at The Register, AWS was opposed to Microsoft joining. However, the other board members appeared to have used their influence to get Microsoft to join CISPE.
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