This is getting sort of silly. One day after Microsoft announced it would launch data centers in the U.K. next year, the company is back again to tout its plan to offer cloud services from two German data centers courtesy of partner Deutsche Telekom.
According to a helpfully bold-faced email, a spokeswoman said the new endeavor will make Microsoft (MSFT) “the first public cloud company” to provide cloud services from “multiple data centers” in Germany. The services will launch in the second half of next year. Rival Amazon Web Services (AMZN) opened its data centers out of Frankfurt late last year.
Last week Amazon also announced plans to open a new region in South Korea, news which probably not coincidentally came a few weeks after Microsoft opened three new cloud facilities in India. As you can see, cloud providers’ data center plans are starting to look like the tech version of Risk.
Deutsche Telekom (DTEGF) will be the only entity, besides the customer, that will have access to German cloud data. That is, at least, partly because of growing concern over data privacy in the European Union. A few weeks ago the Safe Harbor agreement, which governed how data is transferred between the E.U. and the U.S., was struck down.
Germany is particularly important for the future of cloud storage because of its market size and the country’s data privacy laws, which are even more stringent than the rules that govern other E.U. countries.
For more on Microsoft’s cloud technology, check out the following Fortune video:
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