We proceed to adapt our sovereignty strategy—innovating to satisfy buyer wants and regulatory necessities inside our Sovereign Public Cloud and Sovereign Non-public Cloud. We’re saying a brand new wave of capabilities, constructing upon our digital sovereignty controls, to ship superior AI and scale, strengthened by our ecosystem of specialised in-country associate specialists.
Throughout Europe and all over the world, organizations at present face a fancy mixture of regulatory mandates, heightened expectations for resilience, and relentless technological development. Sovereignty has turn out to be a core requirement for governments, public establishments, and enterprises in search of to harness the complete energy of the cloud whereas retaining management over their knowledge and operations.
In June 2025, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella introduced a broad vary of options to assist meet these wants with the Microsoft Sovereign Cloud. We proceed to adapt our sovereignty strategy—innovating to satisfy buyer wants and regulatory necessities inside our Sovereign Public Cloud and Sovereign Non-public Cloud. As we speak, we’re saying a brand new wave of capabilities, constructing upon our digital sovereignty controls, to ship superior AI and scale, strengthened by our ecosystem of specialised in-country associate specialists. With this announcement, expanded options and providers embrace:
- Finish-to-end AI data-processing in Europe as a part of EU (European Union) Information Boundary.
- Microsoft 365 Copilot expands in-country processing for Copilot Interactions to fifteen nations. Be taught extra about this announcement within the Microsoft 365 weblog.
- Sovereign Touchdown Zones service growth and disconnected operations for Microsoft Azure Native.
- Microsoft 365 Native common availability.
- Elevated most scale of Azure Native, assist for exterior SAN storage, and assist for the most recent NVIDIA GPUs.
- Availability of our associate Digital Sovereignty specialization.
Microsoft Sovereign Cloud steady innovation
Our newest choices embrace new digital sovereignty capabilities throughout AI, safety, and productiveness, in addition to a collection of upcoming options that can additional tackle our clients’ sovereign cloud wants.
We acknowledge the necessity for steady innovation and have already begun implementing many commitments. As of this month, now we have already:
- Established a European board of administrators, composed of European nationals, solely overseeing all datacenter operations in compliance with European legislation, thereby placing Europe’s cloud infrastructure into the fingers of Europeans.
- Elevated European datacenter capability with current launches in Austria and an upcoming launch in Belgium this month.
- Embedded our digital resiliency commitments into all related authorities contracts.
- Expanded open‑supply funding via funding safe open-source software program (OSS) initiatives and collaborations in addition to publishing AI Entry Rules that widen secure, accountable entry to superior AI, serving to European builders, startups, and enterprises compete extra successfully throughout the area.
- Superior our European Safety Program by offering AI-powered intelligence and cybersecurity capability constructing initiatives to strengthen Europe’s digital resilience towards menace actors.
New Sovereign Public Cloud and AI capabilities
From the second organizations start designing their environments for sovereignty, they want end-to-end capabilities that assist them embed compliance and management from the beginning.
EU Information Boundary consists of AI knowledge processing residency
We’re delivering on our end-to-end AI knowledge processing commitments, the place knowledge processed by AI providers for EU clients stays inside the European Union Information Boundary, besides as in any other case directed by the client.
This implies all buyer knowledge, whether or not at relaxation or in transit, shall be saved and processed solely within the EU. Our strategy consists of implementing rigorous controls and transparency measures that adjust to EU buyer necessities.
Increasing Microsoft 365 Copilot in-country knowledge processing to fifteen nations
Constructing upon many years of funding in international infrastructure and industry-leading knowledge residency capabilities, Microsoft will now provide in-country knowledge processing for purchasers’ Microsoft 365 Copilot interactions in 15 nations all over the world.
By the tip of 2025, Microsoft will provide clients in 4 nations—Australia, India, Japan and the UK—the choice to have Microsoft 365 Copilot interactions processed in-country. In 2026, we’ll increase the provision of in-country knowledge processing for Microsoft 365 Copilot to clients in eleven extra nations together with Canada, Germany, Italy, Malaysia, Poland, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Arab Emirates, and the US.
New Sovereign Touchdown Zone (SLZ) basis
We’re additionally introducing our refreshed Sovereign Touchdown Zone (SLZ), constructed on the market-proven touchdown zone basis of Azure Touchdown Zone (ALZ).
The Sovereign Touchdown Zone is the really helpful platform touchdown zone for purchasers desirous to implement sovereign controls within the Azure public cloud as a part of the Sovereign Public Cloud.
The refresh of the Sovereign Touchdown Zone consists of:
Over the following few months, the Azure Coverage definitions, initiatives, and assignments that come built-in to the Sovereign Touchdown Zone will proceed to increase to assist our clients obtain sovereign controls within the sovereign public cloud out-of-the-box sooner.
By adopting Sovereign Touchdown Zones, clients can achieve a prescriptive structure that accelerates compliance with regional sovereignty necessities whereas decreasing complexity in coverage administration. This strategy additionally helps organizations confidently scale workloads throughout Azure areas with out compromising on regulatory alignment or operational consistency.
New Sovereign Non-public Cloud and AI capabilities
As organizations deepen their dedication to sovereignty, the power to mix regulatory compliance with innovation turns into particularly vital. This subsequent wave of enhancements helps carry collectively superior AI capabilities and scalable infrastructure designed for each private and non-private environments.
Supporting hundreds of AI fashions on Azure Native with NVIDIA RTX GPUs
As we advance our Sovereign Non-public Cloud capabilities with Azure Native, we’re introducing a brand new Azure providing with the most recent NVIDIA RTX Professional 6000 Blackwell Server Version GPU purpose-built for prime efficiency AI workloads in sovereign environments.
Designed to run over 1,000 fashions corresponding to GPT OSS, DeepSeek-V3, Mistral NeMo, and Llama 4 Maverick, this GPU allows organizations to speed up their AI initiatives straight inside a sovereign personal cloud setting. Clients achieve the flexibleness to experiment, innovate, and deploy superior AI options with enhanced efficiency. This implies organizations can pursue new AI-powered alternatives whereas serving to guarantee knowledge safety and compliance.
As well as, clients can achieve entry to hundreds of prebuilt and open-source AI fashions, able to deploy for a variety of situations—from generative AI and superior analytics to real-time determination making. This mixture empowers clients to experiment, innovate, and operationalize leading edge AI options, whereas protecting governance entrance and heart.
Rising Azure Native scale to a whole bunch of servers
Azure Native has supported single clusters of as much as 16 bodily servers. With our newest updates, Azure Native can assist a whole bunch of servers, opening new potentialities for organizations with large-scale or rising sovereign personal cloud calls for. This enhancement means clients can assist larger, extra complicated workloads, scale their infrastructure with ease, and reply to evolving enterprise wants all whereas aligning with the safety and sovereignty required by European and international laws.
SAN assist on Azure Native
A key spotlight of increasing the dimensions of our Sovereign Non-public Cloud is the introduction of Storage Space Community (SAN) assist on Azure Native. With this replace, clients can now securely join their present on-premises storage options from {industry} leaders to Azure Native. This integration empowers organizations to leverage their trusted storage investments whereas benefiting from cloud-native providers, serving to guarantee knowledge stays inside their desired jurisdiction. European enterprises, particularly, achieve flexibility in assembly native knowledge residency necessities with out compromising on efficiency or management.
Microsoft 365 Native: Common availability of key workloads
One other milestone is the overall availability of Microsoft 365 Native, serving to carry core productiveness workloads—Trade Server, SharePoint Server, and Skype for Enterprise Server natively to Azure Native. Beginning in December, clients can deploy these productiveness workloads on Azure Native in a linked mode, with a disconnected possibility for full isolation coming early 2026. This strategy combines acquainted collaboration instruments with Azure Native’s unified administration and constant Azure providers and APIs, enabling organizations to take care of full operational management whereas aligning with stringent compliance and knowledge residency necessities.
Disconnected operations: Common availability
Microsoft’s Sovereign Non-public Cloud extends sovereignty ideas into totally devoted environments for organizations with strict compliance and management necessities, enabled by Azure Native. Azure Native allows authorities companies, multinational enterprises, and controlled entities to take care of native management whereas nonetheless benefiting from the dimensions and innovation of Microsoft’s international cloud platform.
As a part of Azure Native, we’re introducing the upcoming common availability of disconnected operations, together with the power to handle a number of Azure Native clusters from the identical native management airplane. Accessible in early 2026, this functionality permits clients to function personal cloud environments with a very on-premises management airplane, enabling organizations to function securely and independently inside their very own devoted environments. With disconnected operations, clients can retain enterprise continuity and operational resilience, even in extremely regulated or edge situations.
New associate Digital Sovereignty specialization now out there
We’re excited to formally launch the Digital Sovereignty specialization as a part of the Microsoft AI Cloud Associate Program. This new specialization empowers companions to reveal deep experience in delivering safe, compliant, and sovereign cloud options throughout Azure and Microsoft 365 platforms. By incomes this designation, companions sign their means to satisfy stringent knowledge residency, privateness, and regulatory necessities—serving to clients preserve management over their purposes and knowledge whereas driving innovation. The specialization consists of rigorous audit standards and gives advantages corresponding to enhanced discoverability, specialised badging, and precedence entry to sovereign cloud alternatives.
Wanting forward: Advancing sovereignty via better controls
The Microsoft Sovereign Cloud roadmap will present further capabilities designed to handle evolving buyer wants together with:
Sovereign Public Cloud
- Information Guardian: This upcoming functionality helps present transparency into operational sovereignty controls in our European public cloud environments. All distant entry by Microsoft engineers to the programs that retailer and course of your knowledge in Europe shall be routed to the EU, the place an EU-based operator can monitor and, if obligatory, halt these actions. All distant entry by Microsoft engineers shall be recorded in a tamper-evident log.
Sovereign Non-public Cloud
- Enhanced change controls: We are going to introduce a set of configurable insurance policies and approval workflows that can empower organizations with express oversight of any adjustments propagating from the cloud to the sting, strengthening governance and compliance.
- Web site-to-site catastrophe restoration: Azure Web site Restoration in Azure Native will assist with enterprise continuity by protecting enterprise apps and workloads working throughout outages.
- Transfer from hybrid to completely disconnected: Azure Native will allow clients to transition workloads from hybrid to completely disconnected operations, offering them with flexibility for enterprise continuity.
Nationwide Associate Clouds
Nationwide Associate Clouds are a core a part of the Microsoft Sovereign Cloud technique. They supply independently operated cloud environments that ship Microsoft Azure and Microsoft 365 capabilities below native possession and management.
- Delos Cloud is designed to satisfy German authorities’s BSI cloud platform necessities.
- Bleu is designed to satisfy the French authorities’s (ANSSI) SecNumCloud necessities.
For a lot of public sector organizations, ERP is a vital workload that requires modernization to cloud environments. SAP is planning to deploy its RISE with SAP providing on Microsoft Azure for each Bleu and Delos Cloud clients, along with assist of RISE with SAP for purchasers utilizing Microsoft Azure public cloud deployments.
Be taught extra about Microsoft’s sovereign options
Microsoft delivers unmatched sovereign options, providing a versatile public cloud setting, a personal cloud that scales to your small business wants, and nationwide associate clouds designed to satisfy particular compliance necessities. Our dedication to steady funding and innovation helps our clients meet sovereignty with out compromise.
Uncover what’s subsequent in cloud innovation this November at Microsoft Ignite. Be taught extra and register at present.
