I am involved in the roll-out of Office 365 at a company, where they still have a lot of data on file shares. We explain that we are moving into the cloud and that sometimes prompts the question where the data will actually live. Good question.
“In the cloud”… to some people it sounds rather out there. We are a down to earth company, we don’t have our head in the clouds, so what do you mean working in the cloud?? But of course the data “in the cloud” is stored solidly in Microsoft data centers.
So where are those data centers in which our data are stored then? For one thing, it is always data centers plural: Microsoft copies our data to at least two different locations, so that they will be safe even if something catastrophic happens at one of the datacenters. I’ve heard colleagues say that our data is stored in The Netherlands, but that is only a partial answer.
You can check where your data is stored via: https://products.office.com/where-is-your-data-located. But make sure you scroll beyond the picture, because some services in Office 365 may store data in other locations.
For this company, with headquarters based in The Netherlands, the bulk of the data resides the Euopean Union, mostly The Netherlands and Ireland. However, there are exceptions:
- Sway lives in the United States.
That does not bother us much, because Sway is hardly used in any of the organizations I’ve worked at. - Yammer lives in the United States too!
That is cause for more concern, because Yammer is used more extensively. Fortunately, Yammer is not the most likely place for people to share sensitive, confidential information But it is still something to take into account in our Office 365 governance and its associated guidance.
Microsoft data centers for the European Union. But for some services, the data is stored in the US.
