Turkey’s leading corporation Albayrak Group has filed a lawsuit against Microsoft, seeking $1.5 million in damages over the disruption of production that arose from the mandatory use of the tech giant’s cloud service when operating the company’s Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system.
Albayrak Group officials say they had personally experienced problems when upgrading to Microsoft’s ERP product, resulting in significant monetary losses due to long periods of disruptions in production.
“Global ERP brands force companies’ hands with integrated applications. Microsoft makes it mandatory for its customers who buy this service to use their own cloud system.”
“In the cloud system, data is stored in overseas databases. This situation is extremely undesirable for companies in terms of privacy. Microsoft literally locked its customers out during the system upgrade process, and mediation negotiations ended in a dispute,” according to Albayrak Group authorities.
“Although a company bearing the name 'Microsoft' in its title is active in our country and undertakes all product sales on behalf of Microsoft, when there is a legal dispute, they say, 'We do not represent Microsoft.' Albayrak Group has filed a million-dollar lawsuit against Microsoft at the Commercial Court for financial losses suffered during this problematic software upgrade process that lasted for 33 months.”
According to Sefa Karcıoğlu, one of Albayrak Group’s lawyers on the case, Microsoft, which had denied responsibility for the faulty ERP product, has ulterior motives behind forcing users to connect to an overseas-based cloud system.
“We have previously proven the fact that both the disruption in production in client companies and the functionality of the product are problematic by filing a declaratory lawsuit. Microsoft says, ‘You are responsible for the product that is malfunctioning’; when we ask for compensation, they say they’d only pay $5. They take us for fools.”
“More importantly, contrary to PDPL and GDPR legislations, it forces its customers to use the cloud system. However, it does not directly say it is mandatory but that ‘the system has failed; if you switch to an overseas-based cloud system, you would not experience any problems." In our opinion, their main goal is transferring personal data abroad and storing copies on their systems,” continued Karcıoğlu.
“This motion filed by Albayrak Group is actually not just a lawsuit seeking damages, but a national struggle against global software corporations. Our case is quite solid. First of all, we will prove Microsoft's stance in Turkish courts and then, if necessary, we’ll go to international courts, and stop at nothing until they’re sentenced for these unlawful practices,” Karcıoğlu concluded.
