Microsoft has now announced it has doubled the scope of its UK Azure regions through the addition of newly made Availability Zones. This will increase the Azure regions in the UK’s compute capacity by over 1,500 per cent since their online inception in 2016.
This expansion of the Azure regions will assist organisations based in the UK further as they migrate to the cloud as an essential component of their journey towards digital metamorphosis. It also bolsters Microsoft’s already imposing presence in the United Kingdom. Such a move is set to particularly appeal to organisations within the public sector who are seeking to host information of a potentially sensitive nature both locally and securely.
Azure is currently utilised by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, National Health Service Blood and Transplant, and the Department of Education along with a number of UK councils. These important governmental bodies can make use of both the South and West UK Azure regions, which currently host data for globally-based enterprises and organisations.
An investment in service and infrastructure
Within a single month of Microsoft’s Azure platform going online in the UK back in 2016 it was announced that over 1,000 customers had signed up in order to access the available services. Now in 2019, ten times that number are making use of the American corporation’s cloud services offered from the United Kingdom.
Microsoft is keeping up the pace on what Azure can offer with their continued investment. The growing customer base is ably served by Microsoft investing in both the capability of their services and the cloud. Headlining their invested interests is the launching of Availability Zones in Azure South UK region. Availability Zones provide customers with afforded access to physical and separate locations inside a region which feature cooling and power, options which deliver more choice and security when utilising Microsoft’s cloud and enabling users to network independently.
ClearBank is a new clearing Bank in the UK. Chief Operating Officer Nigel Walder commented on the organisation’s use of Azure and Microsoft’s new zones:
“We welcome Availability Zones in UK South as it will enable us to provide improved resilience and scalability more effectively as ClearBank continues with the launch of new products. Since the inception of ClearBank, Azure has been a core component of our platform and the enhanced zonal resiliency will ensure we can serve our customers even more effectively.”
Availability Zones also provide organisations and businesses with protection against software and hardware failures which may occur, allowing them to provide their customers with a dependable service.
Additionally, Microsoft announced that within the UK South region, users can benefit from the service of Azure DevOps which enables them to create software with the help of tools invested in and developed by Microsoft over the last 15 years.
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