Microsoft has added ‘Availability Zones’ to its ‘UK South’ region datacentres in a bid to attract public sector customers.
Microsoft claims that “tens of thousands” of UK organisations already use Microsoft cloud services delivered from the UK following the launch of local capabilities in 2016 – a move cheered by partners.
UK public sector organisations that use Azure include the Department for Education and HMRC. Availability Zones offer customers access to separate, physical locations within an Azure region featuring independent networking, power and cooling, Microsoft explained.
For anyone using two or more Availability Zones in the same Azure region, Microsoft says it guarantees Virtual Machine connectivity to at least one instance 99.99 percent of the time.
Meanwhile, Vole announced the availability of Azure DevOps in the South region. It claimed it has increased its compute capacity by more than 1,500 percent since its UK Azure regions were first brought online in 2016.
Microsoft UK CEO Cindy Rose said: “The Microsoft cloud has become a core component to the strategies of thousands of UK organisations since the launch of services from our UK cloud regions in 2016. We continue to make significant investments to ensure that our customers are able accelerate their digital transformation journeys and their adoption of cloud services.
“By doubling our UK regions and increasing our compute capacity by more than 1,500 percent, our customers can have the confidence they can access any Azure services available in UK regions whenever they want. The launch of Availability Zones takes Azure to a new level in the UK by offering customers increased reliability, business continuity and peace of mind for their data and services.”
