Soverign Cloud

Episode recorded during hectic times with new puppies and packed schedules

Johan and Gustav tackle Microsoft's announcement about comprehensive sovereign solutions for European organizations - a complex topic they admit requires legal expertise they don't possess, but impacts every European Dynamics implementation. Opening with their standard recommendation of West Europe as primary datacenter and North Europe (UK) as fallback, they debunk latency concerns from 10-12 global implementations spanning Europe, US, and Asia with single instances.

The conversation traces the Max Schrems saga - his persistent legal challenges to US-owned datacenters storing European data, questioning whether peace-time laws hold meaning when conflicts arise. Gustav shares a revealing anecdote about a Swedish governmental organization demanding local datacenter hosting while unknowingly using Office 365 stored elsewhere, illustrating how organizations often lack understanding of where their data actually resides.

Microsoft's three-tier sovereign cloud offering emerges: Sovereign Public Cloud (current setup enhanced with Data Guardian ensuring European-only personnel access and customer-managed encryption keys for everything), Sovereign Private Cloud (Azure in your basement, managed like public cloud, supporting email and SharePoint initially with broader rollout planned), and National Partner Cloud (locally-owned datacenters managed by European partners like T-Mobile or CGI, reminiscent of Germany's now-closed datacenter).

The Dynamics implications remain murky. While Microsoft 365 and Azure workloads seem straightforward for partner clouds, Johan expresses skepticism about Dynamics timelines given its complexity and surrounding infrastructure requirements. The hosts note CRM already works in Norway and Sweden, but Finance & Operations and Customer Insights remain unavailable, and not all datacenters receive updates simultaneously - West/North Europe lead in frequency and features.

A new wildcard enters: potential tariffs on American-owned datacenters could dramatically impact cloud economics overnight, undermining the predictable subscription model that justified cloud migration.

The Blog Post: Announcing comprehensive sovereign solutions empowering European organizations - The Official Microsoft Blog