In today’s digital landscape, organizations and governments are prioritizing data sovereignty to comply with local regulations, protect sensitive information, and safeguard national security. This growing demand for robust jurisdictional controls makes the Microsoft Sovereign Cloud offering especially compelling, providing flexibility and assurance for complex requirements. For those with the most stringent needs, Azure Local enables data and workloads to remain within jurisdictional borders, supporting mission-critical workloads and now expanding to include Microsoft’s productivity solutions—so customers can securely collaborate and communicate within a sovereign private cloud environment.
Today, we’re excited to announce the general availability of Microsoft 365 Local. Microsoft 365 Local is a deployment framework for enabling core collaboration and communication tools—including Exchange Server, SharePoint Server, and Skype for Business Server—on Azure Local. Built on a validated reference architecture using Azure Local Premier Solutions , it provides compatibility and support for sovereign deployments. Partner-led services provide guidance on sizing and configuration, ensuring a full-stack deployment including best practices for networking and security.
Managing infrastructure across a wide range of workloads is simplified with Azure as your control plane, offering cloud-consistent, at-scale management capabilities. In the Azure portal, you get full visibility into your Microsoft 365 Local deployment across the servers and clusters. All hosts and virtual machines (VMs) are Arc-enabled out of the box, providing built-in visibility into connectivity, health, updates, and security alerts and recommendations.
Microsoft 365 Local leverages Azure Local’s best-in-class sovereign and security controls, including Network Security Groups managed with Software Defined Networking enabled by Azure Arc, to isolate networks and secure access to infrastructure and workloads. Azure Local also uses a secure by default strategy by applying a security baseline of over 300 settings on both the host infrastructure and the VMs running the productivity workloads. These security baselines incorporate best practices for network security, identity management, privileged access, data protection, and more—helping organizations maintain compliance and reduce risk.
Customers who want to take advantage of Azure as the control plane for Microsoft 365 Local can now benefit from a seamless cloud-based infrastructure management experience, including Azure services like Azure Monitor and Microsoft Defender for Cloud—available today with Microsoft 365 Local connected to Azure. For organizations with the most stringent jurisdictional requirements that need to operate Microsoft 365 Local in a fully disconnected environment, support for Azure Local disconnected operations will be available in early 2026.
To learn more about Microsoft 365 Local, visit https://aka.ms/M365LocalDocs. If you’d like to connect with an authorized partner for consultation and deployment support, reach out to your Microsoft account team or visit https://aka.ms/M365LocalSignup.
Microsoft