Microsoft Cloud Now Lets European Customers Keep All Personal Data Within the EU

Microsoft has updated all of its major commercial cloud services—Azure, Dynamics 365, Power Platform, and Microsoft 365—to support European customers who wish to keep all of their personal data within the European Union.

“Microsoft is empowering customers by bringing significant enhancements and new features to the EU Data Boundary for the Microsoft Cloud,” Microsoft corporate vice president Julie Brill writes in the announcement post, referencing the software giant’s term for the geographical boundary of this functionality. “With today’s update, Microsoft takes another decisive step in expanding its suite of trusted cloud services that respect European values and meet the specific requirements of our commercial and public sector customers in Europe.”

Microsoft has been working towards this milestone in large part because of pressure from privacy-focused EU regulators that want their constituents’ personal data to be processed and stored locally, and not sent to the United States. Microsoft has long stored EU customers’ data inside the EU, but until now, it has processed most of that data in the U.S. Now, all EU customer personal data will be processed inside the EU.

Though Microsoft isn’t the first cloud provide to achieve this goal—Amazon and Oracle got there previously—Microsoft says that it exceeds the EU’s data sovereignty requirements by including so-called pseudonymized personal data like that found in automated system logs. And it will complete its EU Data Boundary work later this year by fully transitioning the processing and storage of data required during technical support interactions to the EU as well.

Can you learn more about Microsoft’s EU Data Boundary on the Microsoft Learn website.