SAN FRANCISCO, June 20 (Xinhua) -- Microsoft Wednesday announced plans to deliver the intelligent Cloud from two new datacenter regions in Norway, in a bid to further expand its significant and growing investment in cloud computing in Europe.
The two datacenters will be located in Oslo, Norway's capital and the country's most populous city, and the greater Stavanger region, the third most populous metropolitan region in southwestern Norway, respectively.
The Microsoft Cloud, comprising Microsoft Azure, Office 365 and Dynamics 365, will offer enterprise-grade reliability and performance with data residency from the new datacenter locations.
The Azure service will be available in late 2019, to be followed by Office 365 and Dynamics 365, Microsoft said.
"Over a billion customers around the world trust the intelligent Microsoft Cloud to provide a platform to help transform their businesses," said Jason Zander, executive vice president of Microsoft Azure.
He said enterprises and organizations can rely on the Microsoft Cloud service from the new datacenter regions in Norway to meet their data residency, security and compliance needs.
Kimberly Lein-Mathisen, general manager of Microsoft Norway, said the two new datacenters will help grow Norwegian enterprises, government agencies and more than 200,000 "small and medium-sized businesses that create Norway's thriving economy."
Microsoft investment in the datacenters is the first time for the U.S. tech giant to deliver the intelligent Cloud from locations in Norway, which is expected to enable greater innovation for the north European country's oil and gas and other industries, as well as the public sector.
Microsoft Azure regions have more than doubled in number over the past three years, with 52 regions announced across the globe.
