Datacenters are part of today’s critical infrastructure—providing reliable and scalable compute power for online transactions, conference calls, virtual classrooms, supply chain and inventory management, internet searches, and much more around the world. We are continuing to build our cloud infrastructure to support the growing demand for cloud services for business continuity, innovation, and collaboration. To date, Microsoft has announced more than 60 datacenter regions around the globe, each comprising multiple datacenters.

In response to growing customer demand, today we’re announcing that we will establish our next U.S. datacenter region—“East US 3”—in Georgia, with presence in both Fulton and Douglas Counties. This is a significant commitment to the counties and part of Microsoft’s commitment to the Atlanta region announced today—to support the creation of new jobs and local business growth. When choosing datacenter sites, we consider a range of criteria, including proximity to population centers, a broad, reliable and stable power source, multiple high-capacity network connections, a large pool of qualified labor, and affordable and clean energy. Datacenters also support the creation of local jobs directly through construction and operations of the site, and indirectly through business transformation that increases competitiveness and growth. These jobs include roles in IT operations, electrical and mechanical engineering, as well as facility security and maintenance.

The new datacenter region will deliver world-class data security and privacy as well as faster access and our broadest range of Microsoft Azure cloud services to customers in the immediate region and will be available to customers across the U.S. and around the world. We’re continuing to see growing interest and use cases across industries and sectors to use Microsoft’s cloud services for remote work, collaboration and innovation to drive greater business efficiencies. To support customers’ needs for highly available cloud applications, the datacenter region will deliver Azure Availability Zones, enabling cloud applications to be highly available with additional tolerance to datacenter failures.

As part of this investment, it is important to us that we are partners in the communities in which we operate, and to that end, have been hard at work with Fulton and Douglas counties.

“We couldn’t be happier to support and welcome an established company like Microsoft to Fulton County. Their long-term investment is evidence of our skilled workforce and attractive existing infrastructure, both of which will continue to prove critical in the coming months and years.” —Michel Turpeau, Chairman of the Development Authority of Fulton County

“This announcement is another testament to the economic vitality of Fulton County and our strength to grow even during a pandemic. It also reflects Fulton County’s leadership in Georgia by embracing companies that are bringing much needed permanent jobs and investment to our county.” —Robb Pitts, Chairman of the Fulton County Board of Commissioners

“We have worked hard to build a vibrant community to attract investment and growth. Having a brand name like Microsoft locate in our city speaks to the quality of our community. The City of East Point is beyond excited to announce this new data center which will add to the diversity of industry, services and workers found in our community. I always say there’s no point like East Point and this is a testament to that.” —Deana Holiday Ingraham, Mayor of East Point

“We extend a warm welcome to Microsoft and are excited that they selected the City of Palmetto as a location for their data center. This development will generate more jobs and enhance our community. We look forward to all the transformational impacts this development will have on the City Palmetto.”—J. Clark Boddie, Mayor of Palmetto.

“We’re honored to have Microsoft in Douglasville. Today marks another major milestone in both the city and Douglas County’s economic growth, building on years of strategic planning and infrastructure investment. It is important to us that Microsoft is also invested in the region as a community partner. Microsoft’s presence helps cement our position as a center for information technology in the U.S., which has been an ongoing strategic goal.”  —Rochelle Robinson, Mayor of Douglasville, Georgia

Today’s news builds on recent expansion efforts across the U.S., including the recently launched Availability Zones in the South Central US region and planned launch this year for West U.S. 3 in Arizona.
As we grow our cloud infrastructure to meet the increasing demand for local cloud services, we are doing so with a holistic approach, grounded in the principle of being a good neighbor in the communities in which we operate. This includes supporting local community initiatives and priorities.

The East U.S. 3 datacenter region is an important, large-scale project that requires careful planning and management to ensure safe operations that meet our standards for sustainable design and operations, cloud services reliability, physical security as well as data security and privacy when the region is live. We look forward to sharing more on these plans and partnering more closely with the Fulton and Douglas County residents and officials, as well as the greater Atlanta region in the coming months. In the meantime, prospective candidates interested in applying for Microsoft datacenter jobs are encouraged to visit our careers website.