Microsoft on Tuesday launched a public cloud for government customers, offering greater control over their data, and signed up Italian defense group Leonardo and Belgian telecom company Proximus as partners.
The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a digital transformation in many public sector organizations, and Microsoft expects to use its “Cloud for Sovereignty” to better compete with rivals such as Amazon Web Services and Alphabet’s Google.
According to market research firm Imarc Group, the size of the global government cloud market is expected to reach $71.2 billion in 2027, up from $27.6 billion in 2021.
“We expect clients all over the world… but the first few clients are in Europe,” corporate vice president Corey Sanders said in an interview, adding that the company is conducting private customer previews.
The European Union has been at the forefront of privacy and security legislation and its privacy watchdog launched an investigation earlier this year into the use of cloud-based services by the public sector to verify compliance with privacy safeguards.
Both corporate and government customers are increasingly using the data centers of large technology companies in the form of public clouds rather than building their own infrastructure.
Aside from the latest technical capabilities and reduced costs, Microsoft said its cloud product would meet data governance obligations, security controls, citizen privacy, data residency and other legal requirements.
The company is also working with other local partners to deliver custom clouds for local governments.