Back in September, Microsoft started offering Azure and Office 365 services from UK datacenters. At the time, there was no announcement for customers who had existing Office 365 tenants (hosted elsewhere in Europe) about how to move data to the UK but, earlier today, my colleague Brian Cain (@BrianCainUC) tweeted about a Microsoft article titled “moving core data to new Office 365 datacenter regions“. This isn’t a new page but it seems Microsoft has quietly updated it to include reference to a new Data Residency Option for the UK (updated 3 November 2016):
“[Microsoft] offer existing customers that have strict data residency requirements, and that are listed in the table below, an option to have their core customer data moved to the new region.”
Customers with billing address in Previous datacenter region New datacenter region Region available since Announcement United Kingdom Europe, Middle East, Africa United Kingdom September 2016 Office 365 Blog
[some rows have been removed from the table above]
Previously the UK was covered by the statement that:
“The data residency option, and the availability to move customer data into the new region, is not a default for every new region [Microsoft] launch. As [Microsoft] expand into new regions in the future, [Microsoft will] evaluate the availability and the conditions of data moves on a region by region basis.”
I, and my colleagues at risual, have seen a lot of interest from customers who are UK-based but have Office 365 tenants that were created before 2 September 2016; however my colleague Paul Wooldridge highlighted that the option to move data is time limited.
Microsoft’s “How to request your data move” page is clear that for UK customers the request period begins on 1 December 2016 and ends on 28 February 2017 [update 7 December 2016: my colleague Gavin Morrison spotted that the page has been updated to state 12 December 2016-10 March 2017. Update 12 December 2016: the page has now been updated with date “to be determined”], the actual migration of the data can take up to 2 years, and that:
“[Microsoft is] unable to accept requests to be moved after the deadline in each region”
So, if you’re looking to “Brexit your data”, you have a 3 month window in which to make the request, and potentially up to a 2 year wait. Also, once moved, there is no way back – at least not without performing your own tenant-to-tenant migration.