windows_Azure_logo12Microsoft has opened their two newest Azure regions on 27 October 2014 in Australia as detailed in their press release at New Microsoft Azure Geo opens for business in Australia. With two new regions on-line, Microsoft brings their total number of Azure data centres to 19 worldwide. The two new locations are located in New South Wales and Victoria and bring with the full Azure feature set including Compute, Geo-redundant Storage, and Data Services. 

These new data centres offer Azure customers in Australia a number of advantages including:

  1. Lower Latency – With your Azure services hosted within Australia you can now eliminate the hop to the East Asia or Southeast Asia data centres. This should lead to improved to reduced response time in your applications hosted in Azure and offer increased ease when migrating data into or out of Azure.
  2. In-country Data – Data sovereignty is a concern within many organisations, and with Azure offering local data centres you can be assured your data is remaining within the country and will only leave on your terms.
  3. Compliance and Security – The services offered by Microsoft as a part of the Azure platform are highly secure and offer some of the latest security accreditations. The Azure Trust Centre outlines all of the compliance, security, and privacy mechanisms in place within Azure and how your data is protected.
  4. Hybrid Connectivity – Along with new data centres, Microsoft also announced it’s ExpressRoute partners for Australia with Equinix and Telstra available today. With ExpressRoute, you can purchase a private connection to an Azure data centre, ensuring your data only ever passes over a private connection. In addition to privacy, ExpressRoute also offers faster speeds and lower latency allowing you to access your data faster and more reliably.
  5. Performance – In addition to the Azure stand compute instances, Microsoft has brought the newly released D-Series compute platform. This will allow customers within Australia to access the latest compute engines, enabling high-performance workloads in the Azure cloud.

With the new Azure data centres available in Australia, the barrier to entry has been significantly lowered. What kinds of solutions are you planning to deploy now that Azure is available locally?