Summary: Microsoft pressed ahead with plans announced last November to open a data centre in the UK to host Azure and Office 365.
Details: The company in fact opened data centres in four UK locations. Two Azure regions, UK West and UK South, are hosted in data centres in Cardiff and London, respectively. A new Office 365 region includes data centres in London and Durham. Dynamics CRM Online is expected to become available in 1H17.
Customers: The data centres already have their first customers, including the UK’s Ministry of Defence (MoD), which is using Office 365 and Azure, and South London & Maudsley NHS Trust, the country’s largest mental health trust. Private sector customers include Aston Martin, Capita and Rosslyn Analytics.
Angle: The option of hosting data locally, as well as having dual sites for in-country replication and backup, will have been a key factor in securing the MoD and a NHS Trust as customers. It’s not clear who Microsoft is partnering with, but the Wales zone could well be in Next Generation Data’s facility, which is a large-scale site with security credentials that would appeal to public sector entities. Microsoft now has 28 cloud regions globally, having opened in Canada and South Korea in May, with a further six underway. The move is a sign that the Brexit vote has not impacted Microsoft’s decision to open data centres in the UK, though it is worth noting that these plans were likely well on their way even before the vote was completed.