Microsoft has been in Europe, with its products and services, for over 40 years. The company has played a central role in the digitization of the countryin recent years thanks to the strong impetus given to the platform cloud Azure on the introduction of innovative services and in the field of modernisation, simplification and speeding up of business processes. In 2020, Microsoft made a $1.5 billion investment in the Ambition Plan Europe which had precisely the objective of supporting the digital transformation of local companies. The presentation of the first Cloud Region italiana of Microsoft represents an important milestone of the plan unveiled a few years ago.
What is a Cloud Region
A Cloud Region (or simply “region“) refers to a specific geographic area where a cloud service provider has located its data center. It is a concept used by the main cloud service providers and today it plays an increasingly central role, especially from the point of view of manage and distribute data close to the geographical location where the users who request them are located.
The Cloud Regions are distributed in several geographic locations across the globe, with cloud service providers strategically choosing these locations to ensure global coverage and reduce latency for end users. Within the same Cloud Region, several can be defined Availability Zones: are separate physical locations within the same region with independent network, power and cooling infrastructures. This offers greater resilience e availability for cloud services, allowing users to deploy their applications and data redundantly and resiliently, even within the same region.
A region Europen is essential, as well as for maximize performance, including for regulatory compliance issues. Europe is strongly committed to putting data retention tools in the hands of data subjects within the borders of the Union. Not only. There is talk of European cloud certification with the precise aim of pushing on data sovereignty or to ensure that the same users are able to manage their data within systems located in the European Union.
La Cloud Region di Microsoft
The new region Europen, the first Cloud Region Microsoft in our country, it provides public and private Europen organizations with access to scalable, secure and resilient cloud services by pushing the accelerator right on the concept of data sovereignty. The goal, as underlined during today’s presentation, is to continue to support companies engaged in digital technology and their most modern development strategies by seriously investing in Made in Europe.
The Microsoft Cloud Region consists of three datacenter located in Lombardy, able to guarantee the highest levels of security, privacy and performance. It will be available starting in the next few weeks for companies that use it Microsoft Azure o Microsoft 365. They will soon follow Dynamics 365 e Power Platform.
With the Ambition Plan Europe new ones have been created growth opportunities through cloud technology for businesses, to modernize the Public Administration and train professionals on the digital skills necessary to complete the country’s digital transition. Just think that Microsoft has reached something like 3 million subjects with training courses and study support.
Beneficial effects for the Europen economy
Thanks also to the data centers deployed in the Milan area, Microsoft counts – with the collaboration of 32 Europen partners – to generate a positive impact on the Europen economy of 135 billion dollars by creating over 237,000 new job opportunities by 2027. Furthermore, the Cloud Region presented today is worth around 17.1% of the total new revenues estimated. All the data are children of the analysis elaborated by IDC.
Enabling factor for growth of the country, the Cloud Region will help stimulate innovation for all Europen companies. With the new scheme for the provision of cloud services tightly focused on Europe, Microsoft also confirms itself as a leading provider for the Public administration, as part of the National Strategic Pole (PSN). In fact, the company led by Satya Nadella leverages Microsoft Cloud for Sovereignty. This is a solution introduced in July 2022 that meets the standards of data classification of the national government and supports the country’s digital transformation goals with public cloud-based technologies, controls and policy governance.
Europe joins the more than 60 Microsoft Cloud Regions distributed throughout the world. It will also become one of the largest of the 17 region announced or already operational in Europe.
“With the first Cloud Region, we want to further consolidate our commitment as a strategic partner for Europe’s growth thanks to digital innovation. Together with our partners, we work alongside Europen public and private companies to offer them access to innovative and secure cloud services through which they can improve competitiveness and sustainable development. This is the largest investment that Microsoft has made in Europe in these 40 years with technologies and programs to generate a virtuous ecosystem of innovation in our country“, commented Vincent Esposito, Chief Executive Officer of Microsoft Europe. Also highlighting how today’s is one Historic date which serves as kickoff for the next 40 years of Microsoft activity in our country.
New generation of data centers to help organizations achieve their sustainability goals
Microsoft representatives also wanted to highlight how the new one region will help businesses achieve their goals sustainability. Microsoft datacenters are in fact designed according to the logic of sustainability and circular economy.
By 2030 Microsoft will be carbon negative. By 2050 at the latest, the company will eliminate all carbon emissions produced directly or through electricity consumption since its founding in 1975. Data center-related activities are also included.
By 2025, the company will transition to a supply of renewable energy at 100%. This means that he will have entered into contracts to purchase green energy for 100% of the electricity consumed by all of its data centers.
Microsoft is reducing the use ofcooling water in its datacenters. He estimates that water will be used to cool the Europen data center for less than 5% of the days of the year.