The Microsoft Azure Swiss cloud bible

With the introduction of the Microsoft Azure Cloud in Switzerland, companies, including banks, that need to store their data locally can benefit from new data centers in Zurich and Geneva. The article highlights how Microsoft is supporting Swiss companies with secure, legally compliant cloud services for digitalization.

The Microsoft Azure Swiss cloud bible

Charbel Nemnom

Created on:

August 6, 2019

Created on:

August 6, 2019

Charbel Nemnom

Switzerland - a small country with a strong economy

In the cloud business, banks have so far been at a disadvantage. You have to keep your data in Switzerland due to legal regulations. The Swiss Bankers Association (SBA) published a guideline on cloud banking on March 26, 2019. This contains recommendations to increase legal certainty and support Swiss banks in the increased use of cloud services. More about the Guide to secure cloud banking you read here.

Microsoft has recognized the need in Switzerland

In March last year, Microsoft announced the opening of two new Azure regions in Switzerland. The data centers offer enterprise cloud services for companies, public authorities and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) from data center locations in the Geneva and Zurich regions. Microsoft thus offers data residency in Switzerland and supports Swiss companies and institutions, including the financial services industry, in the next steps of their digital transformation. The national data centers open up completely new dimensions in controlling. This means that companies and institutions can meet legal requirements and nothing stands in the way of cloud business.

Microsoft confirmed in its announcementthat the Swiss data centers are expected to be available for the first time in 2019. However, an exact date has not yet been defined.

itnetX as an early adopter in the pioneering role

We are very proud and pleased to be one of the few companies selected for the Microsoft Swiss Cloud Early Adopter Program.

As we approach the official launch of the Swiss Azure regions this summer, we'd like to give you more details about the Azure Swiss Cloud and the services you can expect in the initial phase.

Microsoft Cloud in Switzerland

With the opening of the new cloud regions in Geneva and Zurich, Microsoft will for the first time offer cloud services directly from data center locations in Switzerland and expand Microsoft's existing investments worldwide (54 regions worldwide at the time of this writing). By providing the complete Microsoft Cloud - Azure, Office 365 and Dynamics 365 - from data centers in a specific region. The Microsoft Swiss Cloud enables customers to meet local data residency requirements within Switzerland. In addition, the replication of such data across multiple data centers (paired region) provides reliable protection for business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR).

The data centers selected by Microsoft in Switzerland are located in Geneva (region name: Western Switzerland) and Zurich (region name: Northern Switzerland). The data centers are a Swiss entity with full Microsoft ownership of the infrastructure, and the operating staff is hired locally.

As soon as Azure Swiss is available in Switzerland, the Geneva location (western Switzerland) will be used primarily for BCDR customers, while the Zurich location (northern Switzerland) will be available for all other Azure Swiss services. However, cooperation between German-speaking and French-speaking Switzerland is possible at any time via the Microsoft support team.

Microsoft is committed to the highest levels of transparency, standards compliance and regulatory compliance. To help organizations meet national, regional and industry-specific requirements for the collection and use of personal data, Microsoft offers the most comprehensive compliance offering (including certifications and attestations) of any cloud service provider. This includes the world's first code of conduct for data protection in the cloud, ISO/IEC 27018. To learn more about Microsoft's best practices in the area of data protection, please visit the following additional resources and the Microsoft Service Trust Centerwhich provides information on compliance with data protection standards and regulatory requirements, such as International Organization for Standardization (ISO), Service Organization Controls (SOC), National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Microsoft Cloud Services in Switzerland

The Azure services will be introduced in Switzerland step by step. As soon as the Azure Swiss regions are available, you will be able to use the following services from day 1:

Application Gateway
Key Vault
Azure Cosmos DB
Load Balancer
Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2
Service bus
Azure Resource Manager
Service Fabric
Azure SQL Database/Managed Instance
Storage/Disk Storage/Managed Disks
Storage/Hot/Cool Blob Storage Tiers
Azure SQL Database/SQL Data Sync
Azure Service Manager (RDFE)
Azure Backup
Azure Site Recovery
Azure Monitor\Log Analytics
VPN Gateway/Virtual WAN
Cloud Services/Instance Level IPs/Reserved IP
Virtual Machine Scale Sets
Virtual Machines sizes (A0 - A7/Av2-Series/BSeries/D-Series/DS-Series/DSv2-Series/DSv3-Series/Dv2-Series/Dv3-Series/ESv3-Series/Ev3-Series/FSeries/FS-Series)
Event Hubs
Virtual Machines/Instance Level IPs
Virtual Machines/Reserved IP
ExpressRoute/ExpressRoute Circuits
ExpressRoute/Gateways
Virtual Network
Redis Cache

Once the Swiss regions of Azure are available, Microsoft plans to roll out the following additional Azure services to GA:

SAP-on-Azure (M-Series virtual machines being deployed and released shortly after GA)
Web App/App Services
SQL Data Warehouse
Azure Kubernetes Services
Azure DB for PostgreSQL / My SQL / Maria DB
Cosmos DB
Media Services
Power BI

Office 365 will not follow until around 3 to 6 months after the launch. The master customer data in hibernation mode will remain in Switzerland for the following services:

Exchange Online mailbox content (e-mail body, calendar entries and the content of e-mail attachments)
SharePoint Online (page content and files stored on this page)
OneDrive for Business (upload files)

As far as globally operated services such as Azure Active Directory (AAD) are concerned, the data will continue to leave the regions of Switzerland (as in other regions). Microsoft guarantees in its contracts that it will comply with the relevant laws of certain regions. Accordingly, the Federal Act on Data Protection also for data stored in the regions of Switzerland.

Finally, Dynamics 365 will follow 6 to 12 months after the launch of the Swiss region. You can find out more about the exact dates here: Microsoft Office 365, Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform.

In addition, Microsoft Switzerland continues to expand the services of Azure Swiss so that they are in no way inferior to the global Azure services.

Pricing for services that run in the Azure Swiss Cloud

At the time of this writing, Microsoft has not yet commented on cost models. Based on my experience in Switzerland and with Microsoft Azure in general, we expect the price to be higher compared to other cloud regions. With this in mind, services running from the Swiss Azure Cloud are expected to be approximately 10-25% higher than the Western Europe (Amsterdam, Netherlands) and Northern Europe (Dublin, Ireland) regions, as is the case with the Germany and France Azure data centers.

Conclusion

Accelerate your digital transformation with security. Microsoft has in-depth expertise in data protection, security and privacy. Every new data center will adhere to the Cloud principles defined by Microsoft while joining one of the largest cloud infrastructures in the world. Azure serves more than one billion customers and 20 million companies. itnetX (Schweiz) AG has been a Microsoft Elite Partner for many years, winning multiple awards and being recognized as a reliable IT service provider.With reliable advice, outstanding service expertise and support, the itnetX team delivers cloud solutions based on Microsoft 365, Azure and Azure Stack. Meet at August 29, 2019 the itnetX experts at the Microsoft Briefing Center in Wallisellen. There you will find out how we will accompany you step by step on your way to the Microsoft Cloud and the new Swiss data center.Who knows, maybe the information we share will be useful for your cloud strategy. Would you like a little more support on your cloud journey? Then please get in touch with your itnetX Account Manager. He or she will help you to work through the digital transformation in a guided and secure framework.