Dec. 3 (UPI) --Microsoft is facing a $1.3 billion class action lawsuit in Britain alleging it overcharged clients of its Windows Server software used in cloud computing. The case is being brought ...

Also called "cloud hosting" and "utility computing," IaaS provides the bare server hardware, or the hardware plus a virtual machine (VM), which is one partition in a server shared by many customers.

It revolves around accusations related to fees the software giant charged businesses and other organizations for licensing Windows Server when they were customers of rival cloud computing platforms.

The complexity of cloud computing has prompted ... The appliance comprises Windows Azure, SQL Azure and a Microsoft-specified configuration of network, storage and server hardware.

Microsoft is being sued in the UK for more than £1 billion ($1.27 billion) in damages. The tech giant has been accused of unfairly inflating prices for customers using rival cloud services like Amazon ...

"Put simply, Microsoft is punishing UK businesses and organisations for using Google, Amazon and Alibaba for cloud computing by forcing them to pay more money for Windows Server," she said.

Microsoft is facing legal action in the UK over claims that its licensing practices unfairly increase costs for businesses that use competitor cloud providers such as Amazon, Google, and Alibaba.