Microsoft opens up Azure cloud in Germany even it can't access easily

Microsoft announced a number of new cloud offerings today, including, notably, the availability of Azure Deutschland — a German cloud region that will offer Azure services that come not directly from Microsoft, but from the German data trustee Deutsche Telekom.

The service, launched in Preview today, is interesting because Microsoft works hard to keep itself at arm's length from customer data in this region, and to make sure that the data is kept on German grounds.

In fact, while the region offers redundancy and backup, it does so through a private network to ensure that none of the bits being backed up even go through the public Internet where they might stray onto foreign soil.

Germany has some of the strictest data privacy protection laws on the books, and Microsoft said that Deutsche Telekom will have strict protocols regarding when Microsoft is allowed access, even for support:

That's a lot of work on Microsoft's part to limit the access it has, but with foreign companies increasingly wary of U.S. data policy, it will be interesting to see how popular these kinds of arrangements are.

It's also interesting to note that as Microsoft works to make its customer data less accessible to the U.S. government, the U.S. government is continuing to work to get more of its data with Microsoft: In addition to a new Canadian region, Microsoft also created two new regions designated US DoD East and US DoD West to service government and military customers.