"Azure Deutschland" is active
Under the name “Azure Deutschland”, Microsoft offers with immediate effect services for infrastructure, platforms, and IoT in data centers that are located in Frankfurt/Main and Magdeburg. In addition, a new data custodian concept should ensure that current requirements of the EU and the European Free-Trade Area (EFTA) concerning security, privacy, compliance, and transparency will be adhered.
The data exclusively remain in Germany where they are managed by a German company, the Telekom subsidiary T-Systems. This is why even companies belonging to strictly controlled industry sectors will have the possibility to use Microsoft’s Cloud Services, because their data are subject to regulations of the German legal order and won’t be issued, for example on demand of US authorities - according to the Patriot Act, Microsoft would be obliged to do so under US law. In the “German Cloud”, Microsoft will only be able to access customer data with approval of T-Systems or the customer himself.
However, not all services of the Microsoft Cloud Platform “Azure” are available in the German data centers. The service description makes evident, that Enterprise State Roaming, Azure Active Domain Services or Azure Active Directory B2C can only be obtained from other EU regions, whereas the Key Vault Service is also available in Germany.
Last year in November it was announced, that among Azure also the Microsoft Cloud Services Office 365 and Dynamics 365 will be provided in the German data centers. According to Microsoft, the previews of Office 365 and Dynamics 365 will be available in the German data centers before the end of this calendar year. In the first half of 2017 they will be generally available.