Microsoft announces European cloud expansion

Satya Nadella announces the cloud launch

Microsoft plans to expand its public cloud initiative to the UK in 2016 and has completed its cloud build-out in the Netherlands and Ireland, CEO Satya Nadella announced today.

Speaking at Microsoft’s Future Decoded conference in London this morning, Nadella outlined plans to create a “the most hyperscale public cloud that operates around the world”.

He claimed this would allow customers from startups, small businesses and public sector organisations more choice to be able to build applications and to use the digital technology that they need.

“I’m very, very pleased to announce the expansion of our public cloud in Europe. There are two parts to this that we want to announce today: the first is the completion of the expansion of the expansion of our datacentre regions in the Netherlands and in Ireland; and [the second is] the coming of our cloud region to the UK in calendar year 2016, which really marks a huge milestone,” said Nadella.

The move means that Microsoft will be able to offer commercial cloud services from within the UK for the first time. The company will start to offer Microsoft Azure and Office 365 from local UK data centres in late 2016 with Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online following shortly after.

Microsoft said that it has also completed the most recent expansion of its Ireland site and that its data centre facility in Middenmeer, the Netherlands, is now operational. Both locations serve as hubs for Microsoft cloud services and will provide additional capacity for customers across Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

The UK datacentre rollout and expansion in the Netherlands and Ireland are all part of Microsoft’s more than US$2 billion (€1.8 billion) spend on cloud infrastructure across Europe.

“When it comes to building out the intelligent cloud, perhaps the most salient aspect of the cloud is that it gives you this notion and feeling of infinite capacity. Your ability to aggregate, compute, storage and network as a service is what liberates every organisation and every individual developer to be able to dream big,” said Nadella.

Delivering a keynote speech, Nadella outlined Microsoft’s “interconnected ambitions” to create more personal computing, reinvent productivity and business processes and to build the intelligent cloud platform.

He also described augmented reality, or mixed reality as an “amazing new medium” and said that Microsoft’s HoloLens would have a developer release in early 2016. HoloLens is an untethered, holographic computer headset that enables “high-definition holograms to integrate with your world.”