The size of Microsoft's UK Azure regions has doubled with the addition of new availability zones in the south.

Microsoft's availability zones consist of at least three geographically independent data centers - but not every region has availability zones, including the company's UK North region.

HMRC headquarters
– Thinkstock / mikeinlondon

North and south

Microsoft claims that tens of thousands of organizations across the country use Microsoft cloud services delivered from UK regions.

Microsoft’s cloud platform, Azure, is used by the Department for Education, HM Revenue and Customs, and NHS Blood and Transplant, as well as numerous councils across the country.

Cindy Rose, chief executive of Microsoft UK, said: “The Microsoft cloud has become a core component to the strategies of thousands of UK organizations since the launch of services from our UK cloud regions in 2016. We continue to make significant investments to ensure that our customers are able accelerate their digital transformation journeys and their adoption of cloud services.

"By doubling our UK regions and increasing our compute capacity by more than 1,500 percent, our customers can have the confidence they can access any Azure services available in UK regions whenever they want.”

The company recently opened two Azure Cloud data centers in Cape Town and Johannesburg, its first in Africa.

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