Last week, the government of France announced a trusted cloud doctrine that includes a cloud-first policy to enhance the protection and sovereignty of its critical infrastructure and public sector workloads. To support this important initiative, today, Orange and Capgemini announced they intend to establish a new company, “Bleu,” that will deliver a Microsoft-powered cloud and modern productivity solutions (Azure and Microsoft 365) for public sector and critical infrastructure organizations, with the support of the French state. Together with Capgemini and Orange, we’re humbled to support France in its efforts to realize benefits from the digital transformation of its most mission-critical national operations, foster the development of a local business ecosystem and emerge stronger in a post-pandemic future.
This announcement is the most recent example of nations around the world relying on Microsoft cloud technology to improve services to residents and business communities, while innovating faster, increasing efficiency and getting world-class security. Critical industries, along with local and national governments, are using the Microsoft cloud today to accelerate their digital transformation with confidence in a consistent hybrid environment designed for flexibility and scale, with protection and compliance.
Microsoft is proud to help support nations as they develop forward-looking national digital policies that will drive economic growth. Microsoft has a comprehensive offering of cloud capabilities that can meet their needs to drive innovation, leverage the benefits of the cloud, and better support their residents, business communities and public sector employees and organizations.
As nations increasingly focus on achieving data residency, Microsoft has taken the lead in offering our customers solutions that fit their needs. When organizations choose the Microsoft cloud, they can take advantage of options and tools for determining where data is stored. We recently announced the EU Data Boundary for the Microsoft Cloud, our commitment to European commercial and public sector customers to store and process their personal data in the E.U./European Economic Area by the end of next year, including data residency support for 12 nation states within the E.U. in addition to Norway and Switzerland. This commitment will apply across each of Microsoft’s cloud services – Azure, Microsoft 365 and Dynamics 365 – as well as Microsoft’s customer support operations. Microsoft cloud services already enable customers to comply with the E.U.’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) even without this additional commitment to store and process data within the E.U. boundary. Customers also have access to the broadest range of compliance tools and controls available through our large and ever-expanding network of datacenters around the globe.
While the Microsoft cloud is a secure place for sensitive data and critical services, some customers still require that data be stored and processed on-premises, and here Microsoft offers a rich array of hybrid cloud options. Provisioners of critical infrastructure can extend Azure services and capabilities to their environment of choice — from the datacenter to edge locations and remote offices using Azure hybrid cloud solutions — with Azure Arc and Azure Stack. Azure Arc enables customers to extend Azure management and security to any infrastructure. Azure Stack enables customers to deploy hybrid and edge infrastructure along with Azure services and capabilities in their datacenter, remote offices or edge locations.
Microsoft’s commitment to data security, privacy and data residency is why our public cloud is chosen by 95 percent of the Fortune 500 and used by governments around the world – achieving more than 90 compliance certifications to meet a broad range of industry and regulatory entity standards. In addition, Microsoft was among the first global cloud providers to extend the rights under the GDPR.
We look forward to continuing our mission to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more, in partnership with our commercial, community and government stakeholders. And we stand ready with our partners to support the French state bring its cloud first agenda to life.
To learn more about using Azure for industry-specific solutions, visit https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/solutions/#industry-solutions
