Microsoft rolls out Sovereign Cloud to comply with EU regulations

Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) has started rolling out Sovereign Cloud, a new offering for European customers that houses data on the continent to comply with regulations while still supplying the latest technologies, such as artificial intelligence applications.

The new cloud offerings are Sovereign Public Cloud, Sovereign Private Cloud and National Partner Clouds.

“Sovereign Public Cloud ensures customer data stays in Europe, under European Law, with operations and access controlled by European personnel, and encryption is under full control of customers,” Microsoft said. “This is enabled for all customer workloads running in our European datacenter regions, requiring no migration.”

Sovereign Public Cloud is currently available in preview mode. It will become generally available to all European cloud regions later this year.

“Microsoft’s Sovereign Public Cloud builds an evolving set of sovereign capabilities that can be configured to meet specific needs without sacrificing functionality or requiring migration to specialized datacenters,” the company said.

The National Partner Clouds function as partnerships between Microsoft and local cloud providers. In France, Microsoft is partnering with Bleu, a joint venture between Orange and Capgemini (OTCPK:CAPMF), for Bleu to operate a “cloud de confiance” for the French public sector, critical infrastructure providers and essential services providers that is designed to meet SecNumCloud requirements. In Germany, Microsoft is working with Delos Cloud, a subsidiary of SAP (SAP).

“The launch of Microsoft Sovereign Cloud marks a pivotal moment in empowering European institutions and industries with the control, compliance and innovation they need to thrive in today’s digital economy,” said Capgemini Group CEO Aiman Ezzat.

Other new features associated with the Sovereign Public Cloud include Data Guardian, External Key Management for Azure and a Regulated Environment Management Service.

The Sovereign Private Cloud delivers Microsoft 365 Local, which allows enterprises to run the software suite from their own datacenters.

Microsoft’s new cloud offerings are designed to comply with the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation.