Microsoft South Africa is making Office 365 services available from its South African data centre regions from today.
“Office 365 has for years been providing the foundation of digital transformation for South African businesses,” says Lillian Barnard, MD of Microsoft SA. “Delivering the richest Office experiences from the newly available Microsoft datacentre regions in South Africa is the next step in our journey of partnering with businesses to empower them to do and achieve more, with the security of their data being top of mind.”
Underpinning these benefits of Office 365 are robust policies, controls and systems designed to help keep data secure and comply with regulations. Office 365 provides in-country data residency for core customer data, for example, to help customers meet their data residency requirements.
In-country data residency for core customer data adds additional assurances regarding data privacy and reliability for organisations and enterprises. Core customer data is stored only in their data centre geography – in this case, the cloud data centres within South Africa. This is particularly relevant in industries such as healthcare, financial services and government, where organisations need to keep specific data in-country to comply with local regulations.
Businesses that have already enjoyed the benefits of Office 365 for years need not worry that the experience will change based on the location of the geographic location.
“The Office 365 experience remains seamless because Microsoft’s continued investments in its global cloud network, global cloud infrastructure, and services architecture help provide users with a singular, consistent experience independent of where their data is stored,” says Barnard.
Dynamics 365 and Power Platform are expected to be available in the fourth quarter of 2019.
“We are committed to accelerating digital transformation across the continent and we have seen already seen a tangible difference since we opened Africa’s first hyper-scale data centres in South Africa earlier this year – combined with the first Africa Development Centre (ADC) in Lagos and Nairobi, which allow us to listen to our customers and partners, we are now able to develop locally and scale for global impact better than ever before,” Barnard adds.