Cloud Infrastructure Services Providers in Europe filed an action last year seeking to annul the European Commission's approval of Broadcom's acquisition of the cloud and virtualization giant. CISPE believes the Commission erred in allowing the purchase to go ahead without imposing any conditions on Broadcom to protect the many European cloud providers and their customers who depend on VMware's software. Broadcom sought access to redacted information identifying members supporting the action, arguing that it needed the information to challenge the action's admissibility.
CISPE says the ruling allows the case to proceed without disclosing those identities to Broadcom. "It is a procedural ruling on confidentiality rather than a decision on the substance of the case, but it removes the immediate obstacle to the action moving forward," a CISPE spokesperson told The Register. CISPE argued that identifying the members, which are or have been VMware customers, would expose them to a significant risk of retaliation because of Broadcom's market power. Those members had supplied information about their commercial relationships with VMware.
