Earlier today we announced our plan to offer the Microsoft Cloud, including Microsoft Azure, Office 365, and Dynamics 365 from datacenters located in France with initial availability in 2017. Our local cloud regions help customers to innovate in their industries and move their businesses to the cloud while meeting European data sovereignty, security and compliance needs.

With 36 datacenter regions now announced, the Microsoft Cloud is the global coverage leader with more regions than any other cloud provider. We also offer the broadest range of options for customers to access cloud services locally within Europe from datacenter locations in Austria, Finland, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom.

In September, our two new United Kingdom regions became generally available to customers worldwide. We also opened two Azure Germany regions to all EU customers, offering a unique cloud model – a physically and logically separate cloud instance with customer data remaining in Germany under the management of a data trustee.

It’s exciting to see our efforts in Europe build on top of our global expansions, including the general availability of our cloud from Canada, new regions in the United States, and the announcement of plans to expand our cloud services from datacenters located in South Korea.

Our regions in Europe currently offer Azure services, Office 365 and Dynamics 365 as well as cloud suites like EMS, OMS, IoT, and additional solutions that are ready to deploy locally. Our datacenters, suites and services offer data residency and local compliance certifications including EU model clause 2010/87/EU, together with country specific certifications.  With the largest and most comprehensive set of compliance certifications and attestations in the industry, the Microsoft Cloud gives our customers a trusted, open and complete cloud on which to run their business.

Customers in France, throughout Europe and the world, can get started with the Microsoft Cloud – and Microsoft Azure – today, from our six available regions in Europe. We’ll have more to share about the Microsoft Cloud in France from the Azure Blog in the future.

–Tom