Microsoft Cloud for Sovereignty: Where will my data be stored and how to manage it?

Managing your sovereign cloud

We have lived with the largest public cloud platforms for over 15 years. Over that period we have overcome the initial privacy and security concerns by learning more about the shared security model and the increased efforts from the vendors to provide a secure platform that would meet the most highly regulated customers’ requirements even with their most sensitive data. However, the topic of data ownership and sovereignty remains very important to some of the customers.

Last year Microsoft pushed its Azure offering even further with its Microsoft Cloud for Sovereignty (MCfS). And we have already laid out what it is, how it works and how your business might benefit from it (read the article here). But besides the adoption of MCfS landing zones companies are later faced with the challenge of operating it and ensuring not only the compliance of their data, but every single aspect of their cloud infrastructure.

Cloud challenges

Microsoft Cloud for Sovereignty allows organisations that were previously prohibited from adopting the public cloud to finally utilise the benefits it brings. However, as the organisation is just now beginning to adopt Azure, it inevitably means a learning curve for the internal teams or existing partners.

Besides data security and sovereignty this means building reliable solutions, managing cloud spend and overall ensuring that the migrated systems and platforms are always available and performant. Cloud providers have a lot of help in the form of frameworks and automated scripts that can make cloud adoption easier, but shifting from classical datacenters and virtualization platforms to efficient PaaS services requires a different perspective on infrastructure.

If part of the infrastructure still needs to be located outside of the public cloud and closer to the business, this often means that these parts remain to be operated using different tools and teams.

Picking a trustworthy partner

To ensure high quality of operations while maintaining a high quality of service, new cloud adopters often choose to partner with managed service providers. In Devoteam’s case this means that the same company that can help you adopt Microsoft’s Cloud for Sovereignty can continue to support your new environment from our Cloud Managed Services unit.

Even before the introduction of MCfS, Devoteam CMS have been working on managed security and compliance services, embedding regulatory compliance and data sovereignty in the core of our offerings. With the introduction of MCfS Devoteam has further updated and adopted our full scope of managed services offerings to be inclusive of the added changes that MCfS brings. It is the case for our reliability, security and governance services.

To further emphasise our commitment to sovereignty and compliance, Devoteam CMS will operate your environment only from within the EU, making sure that even the most irrelevant operational data does not leave the borders of EU and that all data is processed strictly under the guidelines of GDPR.

In Devoteam Cloud Managed Services we believe in supporting our customers without asking them to give up their control of the environment. Whether it is the enhanced model of Microsoft Cloud for Sovereignty or a classical environment, the customer is never tied into complex ownership transfer paths and maintains full ownership of their environments throughout the partnership.

If you’re ready to unlock the true value of your company’s cloud environment, connect with our experts – tech advisors for a consultation.