- Local Copilot processing should be live in Australia, India, Japan and the UK by the end of this year
- Microsoft’s ongoing commitment to the EU sees a new Belgian data center on the way
- Azure Local customers get access to Nvidia’s latest GPUs
Microsoft has promised to bring in-country processing to Copilot to 15 markets by the end of 2026 to comply with data residency requirements, adding Canada, Germany, Italy, Malaysia, Poland, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the UAE and the United States in 2026.
The expansion will all come in 2026, with Australia, India, Japan and the UK gaining access to localized treatment by the end of 2025.
This is on top of end-to-end AI data processing in Europe as part of the EU data border.
Microsoft is committed to supporting localized computing
Microsoft Specialized Clouds President and CTO Douglas Phillips announced a slew of expanded features and services in a blog post, including improvements to Microsoft 365 Local, which he stated would access the latest Nvidia GPUs just like any other cloud.
Citing a positive uptake in the company’s sovereign technologies, Phillips added that Nvidia RTX Pro 6000 Blackwell Server Edition GPUs will be available in Azure Local. Users can scale to hundreds of servers, and disconnected operations, coming in early 2026, will allow regulated industries to use Microsoft’s private cloud environments with on-prem control plans for maximum security.
In Europe specifically, Microsoft has already established a board to oversee compliance with sovereignty. A new Belgian data center is also on the way, adding to the company’s existing Austria site.
Other upcoming changes include Azure Site Recovery within Azure Local to reduce downtime during outages and dedicated EU-based Microsoft engineers and operators to comply with Sovereign Public Cloud principles.
Recognizing that customers may also want the flexibility to combine 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 ongoing improvements to sovereignty capabilities and partnerships with local third parties, Microsoft’s response to customer demands is refreshing. Recently slated for vendor lock-in, it’s clear that Microsoft is upping its game as the global cloud industry shifts.
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