In the future, European Microsoft customers could choose to store all their data in European data centers. The American company announced this. This way, Microsoft wants to meet companies that prefer not to have their data sent to the United States.
Microsoft has called the new policy “European Union Data Limits for Microsoft Cloud” and applies to Azure, Micorsoft 365, and Dynamics 365. The company immediately begins technical preparations to make this possible. Everything has to be completed by the end of this year.
Microsoft says many of its cloud services already offer the ability to choose where to store data, but is now working to expand those options even further. According to the company, this is possible due to its “large and continuous” investments in European data centers. Microsoft now has thirteen data centers in Europe, including one in the Netherlands. Incidentally, Switzerland and Norway, two countries that are not part of the European Union, can benefit from the new policy.
Many companies are concerned about the legal status of their data once it is on the servers of US cloud service providers such as Microsoft, Google, and Amazon. Europe has fairly strict rules like GDPR legislation, but in the US, for example, the government can access the data more easily.
