Today, Microsoft Azure is generally available from the new Microsoft Cloud Germany, a first-of-its-kind model in Europe developed in response to customer needs. It represents a major accomplishment for our Azure team.
The Microsoft Cloud Germany provides a differentiated option to the Microsoft Cloud services already available across Europe, creating increased opportunities for innovation and economic growth for highly regulated partners and customers in Germany, the European Union (EU) and the European Free Trade Association (EFTA).
Customer data in these new datacenters, in Magdeburg and Frankfurt, is managed under the control of a data trustee, T-Systems International, an independent German company and subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom. Microsoft’s commercial cloud services in these datacenters adhere to German data handling regulations and give customers additional choices of how and where data is processed.
With Azure available in Germany, Microsoft now has announced 34 Azure regions, and Azure is available in 30 regions around the world — more than any other major cloud provider. Our global cloud is backed by billions of dollars invested in building a highly secure, scalable, available and sustainable cloud infrastructure on which customers can rely.
Built on Microsoft’s Trusted Cloud principles of security, privacy, compliance and transparency, the Microsoft Cloud Germany brings data residency, in transit and at rest in Germany, and data replication across German datacenters for business continuity. Azure Germany offers a comprehensive set of cloud computing solutions providing customers with the ability to transition to the cloud on their terms through services available today.
- For businesses, including automotive, healthcare and construction that rely on SAP enterprise applications, SAP HANA is now certified to run in production on Azure, which will simplify infrastructure management, improve time to market and lower costs. Specifically, customers and partners can now take the advantage of storing and processing their most sensitive data.
- Addressing the global scale of IoT while ensuring data resides in-country, Azure IoT Suite enables businesses, including the robust industrial and manufacturing sector in Germany, to adopt the latest cloud and IoT solutions. Azure IoT Suite enables enterprises to quickly get started connecting their devices and assets, uncovering actionable intelligence and ultimately modernizing their business.
- With Industry 4.0-compatible integration of OPC Unified Architecture into Azure IoT Suite, customers and partners can connect their existing machines to Azure for sending telemetry data for analysis to the cloud and for sending commands to their machines from the cloud (i.e. control them from anywhere in the world) without making any changes to their machines or infrastructure, including firewall settings.
- Microsoft, and particularly Azure, has been a significant and growing contributor to open source projects supporting numerous open source programming models, libraries and Linux distributions. Startups, independent software vendors and partners can take advantage of a robust open source ecosystem including Linux environments, Web/LAMP implementations and e-commerce PaaS solutions from partners.
- Furthermore, with the open source .NET Standard reference stack and sample applications Microsoft has recently contributed to the OPC Foundation’s GitHub, customers and partners can quickly create and save money maintaining cross-platform OPC UA applications, which easily connect to the cloud via the OPC Publisher samples available for .NET, .NET Standard, Java and ANSI-C.
- Azure ExpressRoute provides enterprise customers with the option of private connectivity to our German cloud. It offers greater reliability, faster speeds, lower latencies and more predictable performance than typical internet connections and is delivered in partnership with a number of the leading network service providers including Colt Telekom, e-Shelter, Equinix, Interxion and T-Systems International.
The Microsoft Cloud Germany is our response to the growing demand for Microsoft cloud services in Germany and across Europe. Customers in the EU and EFTA can continue to use Microsoft cloud options as they do today, or, for those who want the option, they’re able to use the services from German datacenters.
Read more about customers choosing the Microsoft Cloud Germany at the Microsoft News Centre Europe and learn more about the product at Azure Germany product page.