Microsoft is once again expanding the regional availability of its services with the launch of Microsoft 365 services hosted on cloud datacenters in Brazil. The new launch follows in the footsteps of similar launches in countries such as Germany earlier in the year, and it"s part of a series of investments Microsoft is making in the South American country, which also includes skilling and sustainability initiatives.
What the launch means is that Brazilian organizations using Microsoft 365 can now rest assured data is being stored inside the country, which can be required by law for certain entities such as financial institutions or the public sector. Data stored in Brazil includes content in Exchange and SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business, and all types of Teams data.
Initially, only Microsoft 365 data is stored in Brazil, but the company has already announced that Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform will also be ready for data residency in the first half of 2021. Additional multi-geo capabilities for Microsoft 365 will be available in the first quarter of the year, meaning organizations can choose where customer data is stored on a by-user basis within a single tenant.
Brazil joins a few other countries that have had other similar launches in the past year and a half, including Switzerland and the aforementioned Germany region. The company"s global network spans more than 130,000 miles of terrestrial and subsea fiber.