Microsoft expands Sovereign Cloud with tools to keep AI models, code and data under customers' own control, including fully disconnected operation
Today in Paris, we announced new capabilities across Microsoft Sovereign Cloud, expanding choice and control for organizations running their most sensitive workloads across public and private cloud, and our growing partner ecosystem.
Context
Governments and regulated industries in Europe increasingly want AI they can run without depending on a US cloud staying reachable, and Microsoft is trying to keep that business on Azure.
Microsoft introduced Microsoft Sovereign Cloud last year, and these updates were announced in Paris. Several features are previews or will only reach general availability at Microsoft's Ignite conference in November.
Deep dive
On October 20, Satya Nadella posted that Microsoft announced in Paris new capabilities across Microsoft Sovereign Cloud, expanding choice and control for organizations running their most sensitive workloads across public and private cloud, and its growing partner ecosystem.
In the accompanying blog post, Douglas Phillips, who leads Microsoft's specialized clouds, described a range of control from Sovereign Public Cloud to Sovereign Private Cloud, which runs on Azure Local in customer operated sites, to partners such as Bleu in France. A Sovereign Control Panel enters public preview at Ignite. For the EU and EFTA, Microsoft is rolling out Data Guardian, which adds oversight by a trusted EU partner when Microsoft engineers remotely access some production systems, and Production Touch Ledger, which keeps tamper evident records of that access. External key management, letting customers keep root encryption keys in hardware they own, is now generally available.
For AI, Phillips wrote that Foundry Local will become generally available at Ignite for connected and disconnected use on Azure Local, with Microsoft, partner and open weight models, and that GitHub Copilot can use locally hosted models. GitHub Enterprise Local also arrives at Ignite. The ability to move workloads from connected to disconnected operation is entering public preview, and confidential virtual machines on Azure Local are generally available.
What to expect next
Watch which features actually reach general availability at Ignite in November, since several are previews. The key test is whether European governments and banks accept Microsoft operated or partner operated clouds as sovereign enough, given debates in Europe over reliance on US providers. Also watch how many models Foundry Local supports offline, and whether Amazon and Google answer with similar disconnected AI offerings for European customers.