Office 365 and CRM Online hosted in Australian data centres from 2015
Thu 11 Dec 2014
Microsoft has announced this week that it plans to host its Office 365 and Dynamics CRM Online services from Australian data centres by the end of March 2015.
In a statement, Microsoft Australia’s managing director Pip Marlow claimed that the organisation would now boast “the most complete cloud in the world.”
These extended services will be delivered from two of Microsoft’s existing data centres in New South Wales and Victoria. Prices for Australian customers will remain unchanged, said corporate vice president of Microsoft Office John Case.
New Australian customers of Office 365 will be served automatically by their local data centre, with existing customers moving to an onshore site at a mutually agreed time, confirmed Case. CRM Online customers will continue to be hosted in Microsoft’s Southeast Asia region in Singapore, unless they opt specifically for Australian hosting.
The announcement comes just months after the Australian launch of Microsoft Azure in October. Last month, the global tech firm also announced that they would be providing Office 365 and Dynamics CRM from local data centres in Japan. Microsoft has already been delivering its Azure services from data centres in two regions of the country, both Japan East and Japan West, since the beginning of this year.
The new Microsoft offering is expected to bring great benefit for Australian businesses, including reduced latency, data residency, and an increased ability to comply with local regulations. Microsoft released in its statement that the new services will “provide customers with faster performance, offer geo-redundant backup and help address data residency considerations.”
According to Microsoft, its major customers in the region are expected to include organisations across healthcare, education, government, and finance, with Marlow noting that it is these sectors which are the most concerned with the residency of their data.
Steven Miller, Office division business group director at Microsoft Australia, said that housing both products within Australian national borders will enable partners to “just deliver,” avoiding “conversations that relate to data sovereignty […] and just focus on delivering innovation and solutions for the customers.”
