Businesses and organizations have become increasingly concerned about the geographic location of their data. This is because the physical location of a data center impacts speed and latency, as do the data protection laws in which it resides.
In late 2020, Microsoft was granted approval to establish a center at two locations in Auckland, New Zealand. Meaning that Microsoft will be able to add a new region to its existing 59 regions worldwide.
This is a major milestone in delivering enterprise-grade cloud services to all corners of the world. The New Zealand region will also deliver local access to cloud services including Microsoft Azure, as well as Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, and Power Platform, and meet their data hosting, security, and compliance requirements.
Benefits of local data centers
Regional data centers reassure businesses that any data created and managed in the platform stays local. Microsoft will not disclose customer data in the Microsoft Cloud to a government or law enforcement agency except as directed to do so, or where required by law. This is known as data sovereignty.
PageProof data storage
PageProof is partnered with Microsoft and sits on the Microsoft Azure cloud platform. Microsoft Azure leads the cloud computing industry in ISO certifications. This standard helps organizations keep information assets secure.
PageProof automatically stores your data at one of 14 data centers. Storage locations as of August 2020 include the following:
- Australia
- Brazil
- Canada
- France
- Germany
- Japan
- Norway
- South Africa
- United Arab Emirates
- United States – Central
- United States – East
- United States – South Central
- United States – West
- United Kingdom
The enterprise plan allows you to nominate your data storage location – ensuring your data resides where you have chosen, and not scattered over multiple regions.
For enterprise customers, local data centres mean that they can easily demonstrate regulatory and legal compliance.
Nominating your data sovereignty brings the following benefits for PageProof customers:
- the laws that protect your data align with your chosen data region
- increased speed and reduced latency for your users
A New Zealand-based Microsoft data center is an exciting announcement for New Zealand PageProof customers. At this stage, it is looking likely that these will open in 2022.
Note: The original blog has been updated with new information confirming the approval of the New Zealand data centre in September 2020. We will endeavor to keep this up to date as information is released.