Microsoft Will Open German Data Centres In June

Microsoft will open its two German data centres in June, a company spokesperson has confirmed to TechWeekEurope.

But while the two data centres located in Magdeburg and Frankfurt will launch with Azure cloud capabilities, services such as Office 365 and Power BI won’t be up and running in the region until September, according to Ruediger Dorn, a director of cloud computing at Microsoft

“In Germany we are looking at June,” said Dorn, speaking to TechWeekEurope at Cloud Expo Europe in London.

September for Office 365

“It’s a rolling go-live, because from a product perspective, the infrastructure services of Azure are required to put some of the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) components in Office 365, Power BI etc. on top, which is why Azure comes in June, then in September or later in the year we’ll have Office 365 and CRM online.”

Microsoft first announced the German data centres last November. The facilities will be run in partnership with Deutsche Telekom, with Microsoft highlighting the security benefits of using German-only regions for German customers, especially in light of the recent invalidation of Safe Harbour and the introduction of Privacy Shield, a framework Microsoft this week came out in support of.

“We are continuously expanding our data centre footprint,” said Dorn.

“Which means when you look at the latest announcements in the UK and Germany, we are adding data centres that allow data residency in particular countries. At the end of the day certain industries, let’s say healthcare, get rules about where the data needs to reside. When the rules say that data needs to reside in Germany or the UK, then yes we can respond to that.”

Dorn also told TechWeekEurope that Microsoft is planning further data centre expansion to meet the demands of its cloud customers.

“That expansion plan is not the end of the line, it is ongoing,” he said.

“We do not disclose because this is a fairly complex process to go through and we take a lot of due diligence on where we put data centres, because it’s a large investment. But expect us to continue.”

However, he said that he does not know the exact timeline for the opening of Microsoft’s UK data centres.

In December, Microsoft cloud engineer Ralf Wigand told German customers in a blog post that their data will well and truly be residing only in Germany.

“Where is customer data stored? Well, this is a simple question, and the answer is: Only in the German data centres,” Wigand wrote.

“Data exchange between those two data centres (or better start talking of regions instead of data centres, so Germany Central and Germany Northeast) is handled by a dedicated network line leased from a German provider, just to make sure that no data is accidently routed outside of Germany.”

Take our cloud in 2016 quiz here!