Microsoft to offer cloud services from the UK

Microsoft has confirmed plans to introduce its first UK data center with popular cloud based applications like Office 365 and Microsoft Azure being made available from late 2016. This means greater performance and reliability, as well as the same trusted principles of security and privacy for businesses and government organisations across the UK that use Microsoft cloud products. 

There are also plans to expand Microsoft's cloud services throughout Europe with expansions of its data center facilities in Ireland and the Netherlands which serves as Europe's cloud comping hubs.

Not only does this mean greater cloud offerings in the UK and Europe but will also provide new opportunities and IT roles within Microsoft's data centers to accommodate the increased cloud offerings. Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella hopes that this can help enable growth for local economies and allow small businesses and startups to benefit from the expansion of data services.

“I'm very pleased to announce the expansion of our public cloud in Europe. There's two parts to this - the first is the completion of the expansion of our datacentre regions in the Netherlands and in Ireland, and the coming of our cloud region to the UK in calendar year 2016.” said Nadella of Microsoft. “It really marks a huge milestone and a commitment on our part to make sure that we build the most hyperscale public cloud that operates around the world with more regions than anyone else, to give our customers from startups to small businesses to public sector organisations more choice to build their applications.”

This means that Microsoft can offer commercial cloud services within the UK for the first time and begin to roll out Microsoft Azure and Office 365 from local UK centres in late 2016 with Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online planned to follow shortly after. The news follows Amazon's recent announcement of it's own plans to build a UK datacentre at the end of 2016 and be the third one in Europe to support it's Amazon Web Services (AWS).

The location has yet to be confirmed but the decision means an increase of IT opportunities for data analysts and cloud computing job roles within the UK.