- Local Copilot processing will be live in Australia, India, Japan and the UK by the end of this year.
- Microsoft’s continued commitment to the EU includes the arrival of a new data center in Belgium
- Azure Local customers have access to the latest GPUs from Nvidia
Microsoft has promised to expand national processing to Copilot to 15 markets by the end of 2026 to comply with data residency requirements, adding Canada, Germany, Italy, Malaysia, Poland, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Arab Emirates and the United States in 2026.
Expansion will take place in 2026, with Australia, India, Japan and the United Kingdom expected to have access to localized treatment by the end of 2025.
This is in addition to end-to-end processing of AI data in Europe under the EU Data Border.
Microsoft emphasizes support for processing localized data
Microsoft Specialized Clouds President and CTO Douglas Phillips announced a host of expanded features and services in a blog post, including improvements to Microsoft 365 Local, which he said would provide access to the latest Nvidia GPUs like any other cloud.
Hinting at positive adoption of the company’s sovereign technologies, Phillips added that Nvidia RTX Pro 6000 Blackwell Server Edition GPUs will be available in Azure Local. Users can scale to hundreds of servers, and disconnected operations coming in early 2026 will allow regulated industries to use Microsoft’s private cloud environments with on-premises control planes for maximum security.
In Europe specifically, Microsoft has already established a board of directors to oversee respect for sovereignty. A new Belgian data center is also in the works, adding to the company’s existing site in Austria.
Other upcoming changes include Azure Site Recovery in Azure Local to reduce downtime during outages and dedicated Microsoft engineers and operators based in the EU to comply with sovereign public cloud principles.
Recognizing that customers may also want the flexibility to combine local providers with Microsoft tools, the company has also partnered with Delos Cloud in Germany and Bleu in France to support their governments.
With these continued improvements to sovereignty options and partnerships with local third parties, Microsoft’s response to customer demands is refreshing. Recently slated for vendor lock-in, it’s clear that Microsoft is upping its game as the global cloud industry evolves.
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