Microsoft today revealed that Office 365 Germany has moved to general availability. As the name suggests, the offering is a German-specific version of the company's cloud-based productivity suite. More specifically, it gives regulated organizations in Germany a safe environment for their productivity needs.
Collaboration services and the full Office 365 suite are now held in German located datacenters. This allows a safe and locally held cloud environment for the public and financial sector in the country. Of course, normal customers away from organizations can also get the service.
“Office 365 Germany provides innovative, cloud-based productivity tools that enable our customers to grow their businesses and meet their strict compliance restrictions like data residency in Germany. We are providing our customers a unique, differentiated option in how their data is handled and where it is stored, helping them fuel their digital transformation,” says Sabine Bendiek, Area Vice President, Microsoft Germany.
Customer data is stored exclusively in Germany and data access if protected under German law through a data trustee. T-Systems International GmbH, an independent subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom, will act as trustee.
Office 365 Germany
Because of local deployment, Office 365 Germany lets customers in the country adhere to EU data protection laws. Microsoft launched datacenters in Frankfurt/Main and Magdeburg last year. The first Microsoft service to be launched from the datacenters was Azure.
Christian Glanz, member of the executive board at Deutsche Vermögensberatung, a German financial advisory company which serves around 6 million clients explains why Office 365 Germany is important:
“Office 365 Germany enables our employees to shape their office routine and work truly from anywhere. We are convinced that Office 365 Germany not only meets the strict global data protection and data security standards, but also addresses the specific requirements that many German businesses have on data protection and compliance through the German datacenters and the German data trustee – this also applies to highly sensitive data held by Deutsche Vermögensberatung.”