Worried Europeans can now cut Azure's phone cord completely
- Reference: 1772025285
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2026/02/25/microsoft_azure_local/
- Source link:
The latest change comes amid heightened trade and geopolitical tensions between the US administration and Europe, with more customers in the trading bloc seeking reassurances about digital sovereignty.
Like rival US hyperscalers, Microsoft has rolled out initiatives in Europe in a bid to address jittery locals worried about the possibility – no matter how remote – of service interruption or their data being accessed by American officials under the US CLOUD Act.
[1]
In March, Microsoft completed its [2]EU Data Boundary service , then added [3]more features in November . Yet for a growing number of organizations in Europe, only infrastructure under their direct control will do.
[4]
[5]
Azure Local (formerly Azure Stack HCI) is Microsoft's answer to those concerns. Using specialized hardware, Azure Local lets customers run workloads on-premises. However, it still needed to phone home occasionally – its management via Azure Arc ran in the cloud, and pulling the plug for more than 30 days resulted in reduced functionality.
By making [6]disconnected operations available in Azure Local , organizations can "now run mission-critical infrastructure with Azure governance and policy control, with no cloud connectivity, optimizing continuity for sovereign, classified or isolated environments," Microsoft said this week.
[7]
In other words, no more calling back to the mothership.
Microsoft has also made Microsoft 365 Local available (think Exchange Server, SharePoint Server, and Skype for Business Server) and announced Foundry Local (only available to "qualified customers").
"This brings the richness of Microsoft's enterprise AI capabilities to on-premises systems, complete with local inferencing and APIs that operate completely within customer-controlled data boundaries," Microsoft said.
[8]
Microsoft's sovereignty claims may ring hollow for some after it admitted in France last year that it [9]could not guarantee sovereignty if it were compelled to hand data to the US government. The ability to completely pull the plug is therefore intended to [10]reassure customers, even if the software remains proprietary and supplied by a US tech giant.
[11]Microsoft gives Windows laggards the 'gift of time' wrapped in licensing fees
[12]Microsoft teases 'reimagined SharePoint experience' with added AI
[13]Microsoft execs worry AI will eat entry level coding jobs
[14]Microsoft boffins cook up archival storage using Pyrex glass they say can last over 10,000 years
Francisco Mingorance, secretary general of European cloud provider association CISPE, told The Register : "Some of these new options are products that CISPE has advocated for with Microsoft so it is good to see them becoming available to European customers and partners.
"Sovereignty is increasingly a requirement, and we welcome any new services, tools, and software that can run in European Cloud Infrastructure Services Providers' datacenters and on their own platforms. We look forward to testing these products against our forthcoming CISPE Sovereign Cloud Services Framework to see if they qualify for a Sovereign Badge or a Resilient Badge."
CISPE [15]won a concession from Microsoft in 2024 that required the Windows behemoth to develop a version of Azure Local tailored for European hosters, in return for dropping a complaint over alleged anti-competitive behavior. Microsoft subsequently [16]missed a delivery deadline .
Microsoft is not the only tech giant [17]concerned about sovereignty . Amazon Web Services made its [18]European Sovereign Cloud generally available earlier this year, and Google is selling customers a [19]variety of solutions , including Google Cloud Airgapped, which runs on servers fully disconnected from the internet.
Whether these efforts satisfy customers will hinge on implementation and on how sovereignty is defined. Being able to disconnect completely will satisfy some, though others may still worry that the software remains under Microsoft's control.
Enterprises in Europe looking to local tech providers to run their entire stack were given an example of how to do it last week. [20]Plug-and-play it is not, but the rewards are obvious . ®
Get our [21]Tech Resources
[1] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/paasiaas&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2aZ8qtR0_fDDBui0S-G8QzQAAAkM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2025/03/03/microsoft_unveils_a_finalized_eu/
[3] https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/07/microsoft_announces_strengthening_of_sovereignty/
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/paasiaas&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aZ8qtR0_fDDBui0S-G8QzQAAAkM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/paasiaas&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aZ8qtR0_fDDBui0S-G8QzQAAAkM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2026/02/24/microsoft-sovereign-cloud-adds-governance-productivity-and-support-for-large-ai-models-securely-running-even-when-completely-disconnected/
[7] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/paasiaas&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aZ8qtR0_fDDBui0S-G8QzQAAAkM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[8] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/paasiaas&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aZ8qtR0_fDDBui0S-G8QzQAAAkM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/25/microsoft_admits_it_cannot_guarantee/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/30/euro_firms_must_ditch_us/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2026/02/24/microsoft_windows_support/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2026/02/24/microsoft_365_roadmap_update/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2026/02/23/microsoft_ai_entry_level_russinovich_hanselman/
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2026/02/19/microsoft_glass_storage/
[15] https://www.theregister.com/2024/07/10/microsoft_avoids_antitrust_probe/
[16] https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/16/cispe_and_microsoft_abandon_dreams/
[17] https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/07/microsoft_announces_strengthening_of_sovereignty/
[18] https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/15/aws_european_sovereign_cloud/
[19] https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/10/google_uk_data_sovereignty/
[20] https://www.theregister.com/2026/02/20/ditching_aws_euro_stack/
[21] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Bollocks
You can hide all you want, but ultimately US Cloud Act enables access to these "sovereign" and offline services to US government anyway and you, as a customer, will never know your data was ingested.
...in return for dropping a complaint over alleged anti-competitive behavior. Microsoft subsequently missed a delivery deadline.
This is why you dont drop the complaint UNTIL they've delivered their promises. You ask the courts to put the case on hold until lets say 1 week after the deadline. If they havent delivered the case goes on, and you ask for additional punishment for stringing the court along.
Yes, I know that's not how these cases go, but it's how they bloody well should work...
I don't know, but when I had a wine and steak dinner one time I forgot about important appointment the next day.
Wrong vocabulary
>> the sufficiently paranoid
The word you are looking for is 'prudent'.
>> jittery locals
Again with the specious vocabulary.
Privacy, autonomy, and independence should not be seen as paranoid. Especially so when an orange convicted felon sex abuser has a boot on your neck, aka tariffs. And let's not forget the intention by the aforementioned orange convicted felon sex abuser to steal a chunk of European territory for America's 'security'.
I think there are a lot of Americans out there who still don't understand just how badly Trump reflects on the USA as a whole. The damage has been done. You cannot unring the bell.
Re: Wrong vocabulary
> a boot on your neck, aka tariffs.
A boot on whose neck? Tarrifs are paid by businesses and consumers in the importing country, that boot is on American necks not European ones.
Re: Wrong vocabulary
That is correct. But... coupled with those tariffs is the promise (for all that is worth) to remove them if production is moved to the USA. That is already happening. See TSMC, for example.
We should have 1000% tariffs on American technology companies. And ban them anyway on security grounds.
Someone please tell me what the point of Azure Local (formerly Azure Stack HCI) is. I just don't get it.
All the difficulties of on-prem combined with the costs of cloud.
Don’t forget the vendor lock-in
I suppose in theory it allows those who are experienced in running Azure with scripting and so on and so forth to apply that to on-prem without re-inventing the wheel.
But the kind of people who want this presumably already have all the experience built up of doing this on-prem anyway. Possibly in a clunkier way, but with the added benefit they can pick their own hardware and don't have to choose it from an MS approved list.
How can you trust closed source s/ware ?
If you do not have the ability to read the code then how do you know what it is doing ? At the behest of the orange thug MS could be forced to put in some covert back channel on the next update.
Meh
I might have invested (under protest) in the on-prem Azure solutions if they hadn't always felt like an unloved step-child that Microsoft would rather didn't exist and they didnt really want to sell to you.
Changing road maps, poor support, poor updates, expensive, hard work, and historically too close to the mothership.
They want you on their actual cloud and that's pretty much it, so you have to really want something specific from MS for the other Azures to look tempting.
If you want on-prem cloud or HCI solutions it's easier to look elsewhere.
Too little. Too late.
I mean if anyone was *trusting* Us companies up till now, then they aren't as clever as they think they are.
And if you didn't trust US companies (been my default since 1980 when I soldered my first ZX80) before, then why on earth would you now ?
There is a grim amusement to be had from Schrodingers Tech Company. Crawling up POTUS arse on the one hand whilst desperately pretending they are decoupling on the other.