During its latest online briefing on digital sovereignty, Microsoft confirmed that customers are requesting more details on the company’s digital sovereignty posture. Given the increasingly volatile geopolitical environment, these requests are now more focused, more urgent, and more frequent than in the past. Consequently, Microsoft has now updated its sovereign cloud offerings to include details for: 1) Sovereign Public Cloud; 2) Sovereign Private Cloud; and 3) National Partner Cloud.

While European customers of late have been more vocal about their digital sovereignty needs, it’s not just Europe where Microsoft is evolving its digital sovereignty offerings. For example, Microsoft has offered a National Partner Cloud in China via 21Vianet for over 10 years and Sovereign Public Cloud in Australia on the Azure Protected level Cloud since 2018. But with the EU in particular seeking more independence from the US, Microsoft has now clarified and formalized its offerings specifically for the EU market.

Here is what international Microsoft customers should know and how these three different options compare to its most direct competitors.

Sovereign Public Cloud

  • What it is: This is an update to Microsoft Cloud for Sovereignty and will be accessible through all of Microsoft’s existing data center regions across Europe, serving EU customers using services like Microsoft Azure, Microsoft 365, Microsoft Security, and Power Platform.
  • What it does: The sovereign public cloud ensures that customer data remains within Europe and only European nationals will be responsible for the operations. Customers will manage access whilst retaining control over encryption.
  • How it compares: On the upside, this capability is available for all workloads hosted in Microsoft’s onshore data centers and does not require any data migration. On the downside, the sovereign public cloud from Microsoft is not a fully physically and logically separated public cloud environment like the one that AWS announced it will launch by the end of 2025. As such, it will not grant a “single vendor multicloud” deployment option, mixing sovereign and nonsovereign physically and logically separated environments.
  • Important to note: It is worth remembering that all US hyperscalers are still subject to US laws and that the risk of cloud services suspension, though remote, is material. For this remote eventuality, Microsoft is working on a new structure that will include the development of a software code repository in Switzerland. Furthermore, Microsoft plans to have a series of companies — other providers — that would have the screening license to be able to provide continued cloud services in this remote scenario.

Sovereign Private Cloud

  • What it is: Through this offering, Microsoft will provide a new sovereign private cloud to support critical collaboration, communication, and virtualization services workloads on Azure Local.
  • What it does: This solution integrates Microsoft 365 Local, which Microsoft recently announced, with Azure Local, providing capabilities for hybrid and air-gapped environments to meet customers’ resiliency and business continuity requirements for critical services.
  • How it compares: This is an important step forward for Microsoft’s customers who need that extra level of assurance for running specific infrastructure and capabilities on their premises under their own full control. However, the private cloud market is not short of sovereign options. These range from private cloud environments implemented with the help of service providers to the standard offerings of local private cloud vendors. This is an entirely different competitive landscape where security and sovereignty requirements play a different role versus the completeness of the offering.
  • Important to note: As of today, Microsoft’s sovereign private cloud ensures regulatory compliance and low-latency performance in air-gapped environments. Microsoft sees it as a complement to the public cloud scenario and not necessarily as a full-feature capability compared with the public cloud offerings.

National Partner Cloud

  • What it is: National partners are government-approved local operators independent from Microsoft. In France, for example, there is an agreement with Blue (a joint venture between Capgemini and Orange) to operate a cloud de confiance for the French public sector and critical infrastructure providers. This is designed to meet the French SecNum cloud requirements. In Germany, meanwhile, there is an agreement with Delos Cloud, an SAP subsidiary, to operate a sovereign cloud for the German public sector that’s designed to meet the German government’s cloud requirements. In China, Azure works with 21Vianet.
  • What it does: These environments are very specific to the compliance standards and criteria of the public sector and critical infrastructure. In France and Germany, national partner clouds offer comprehensive capabilities of Microsoft 365 as well as Microsoft Azure in independently owned and operated infrastructure settings. In the case of national partner clouds, all updates to the cloud are audited and auditable by the operator of the cloud.
  • How it compares: The National Partner Cloud competes with other provider offerings catering to the public sector. Notable offerings in this space include Oracle’s Government Cloud and Oracle Alloy (operated and customized by partners), as is the case for the New Zealand Sovereign Cloud offering from TEAM IM known as TEAM Cloud. In China, AWS works with Sinnet for Beijing Region and NWCD for Ningxia Region.
  • Important to note: National Partner Cloud is very market specific, which does represent a hurdle in countries where smaller scale does not promote these investments or where the cloud market is not yet as developed as in France or Germany. Furthermore, it does require a local partner like Blue or Delos in place, which creates a strong dependency on third-party capabilities. In China, working with a local partner is a requirement as long as a foreign cloud vendor wants to provide services, whether it’s for SOEs, private sectors, or consumers.

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