Microsoft to offer cloud services from UK data centres from 2016

Microsoft has announced an expansion of its public cloud presence in Europe with new data centres to be based in the UK, slated to begin operations from late 2016. The move follows hard on the heels of a similar announcement by Amazon Web Services (AWS) last week.

The announcement that Microsoft is to add UK-based data centres was made by chief executive Satya Nadella, during a keynote speech at the firm’s Future Decoded event in London.

“I’m very pleased to announce the expansion of our public cloud in Europe. There are two parts to this: the first is the completion of the expansion of our data centre regions in the Netherlands and Ireland, and the coming of our cloud region to the UK in calendar year 2016,” Nadella said.
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“This marks a huge milestone and a commitment on our part to make sure that we build the most hyperscale public cloud that operates around the world, with more regions than anyone else, so giving our customers, from startups to small business to public sector organisations, more choice to be able to build their applications,” he added.

Microsoft will offer its Azure and Office 365 services from the UK region initially, with Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online to follow. The move is set to offer local data residency for customers based here in the UK, bringing world-class reliability and performance to government organisations, regulated industries and other businesses, Microsoft said.

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