- Copilot local processing will be available in Australia, India, Japan and the United Kingdom later this year.
- Microsoft’s continued commitment to the EU sees a new data center in Belgium on the way
- Azure Local customers have access to the latest Nvidia GPUs
Microsoft has promised to bring Copilot in-house processing to 15 markets by the end of 2026 to meet data residency requirements, adding Canada, Germany, Italy, Malaysia, Poland, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Arab Emirates, and the US in 2026.
All expansion will occur in 2026, with Australia, India, Japan and the United Kingdom having access to localized processing by the end of 2025.
This is in addition to end-to-end AI data processing within Europe as part of the EU data border.
Microsoft bets on localized data processing
Microsoft Specialized Clouds President and CTO Douglas Phillips announced a host of expanded features and services in a blog post, including improvements to Microsoft 365 Local, which he said would have access to Nvidia’s latest GPUs like any other cloud.
Alluding to positive adoption of the company’s sovereign technologies, Phillips added that Nvidia RTX Pro 6000 Blackwell Server Edition GPUs will be available on Azure Local. Users can scale to hundreds of servers, and disconnected operations rolling out in early 2026 will allow regulated industries to use Microsoft private cloud environments with local control planes for maximum security.
Specifically in Europe, Microsoft has already established a board of directors to oversee sovereignty compliance. A new data center is also in the works in Belgium, which will add to the company’s existing site in Austria.
Other upcoming changes include Azure Site Recovery within Azure On-Premises to reduce downtime during outages and dedicated Microsoft engineers and operators based in the EU to comply with Sovereign Public Cloud principles.
Recognizing that customers may also want the flexibility of combining local providers with Microsoft tools, the company has also partnered with Delos Cloud in Germany and Bleu in France to support their governments.
With these continued improvements to sovereignty options and partnerships with local third parties, Microsoft’s response to customer demands is refreshing. Recently slated to lock down vendors, it’s clear that Microsoft is upping its game as the global cloud industry changes.
Follow TechRadar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to receive news, reviews and opinions from our experts in your feeds. Be sure to click the Follow button!
And of course you can also follow TechRadar on TikTok for news, reviews, unboxings in video form and receive regular updates from us on WhatsApp also.
