This phased rollout of its “EU data boundary” will apparently be applied to all of its core cloud services - Azure, Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365 and Power BI platform. 

Since the introduction of General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) by the EU IN 2018, that protects user privacy, business giants have grown increasingly anxious of the international flow of consumer data. 

The European Commission, which serves as the executive arm of the EU, is developing ideas in order to safeguard the privacy of the European customers whose data is being transferred to the United States. 

"As we dived deeper into this project, we learned that we needed to be taken more phased approach," says Microsoft’s Chief Privacy Officer Julie Brill. “The first phase will be customer data. And then as we move into the next phases, we will be moving logging data, service data and other kind of data into the boundary.” 

The second phase will reportedly be completed by the end of 2023, while the third in year 2024, she added. 

Microsoft runs more than a dozen datacenters throughout the European countries, like France, Germany, Spain and Switzerland. 

Data storage, for large corporation, have become so vast and is distributed across so many different countries that it has now become a challenge to understand where their data is stored and whether it complies with regulations like GDPR. 

"We are creating this solution to make our customers feel more confident and to be able to have clear conversations with their regulators on where their data is being processed as well as stored," says Brill. 

Moreover, Microsoft has previously mentioned how it would eventually challenge government request for customer data, and that it would compensate financially to any customer, whose data it shared in breach of GDPR.