With the GDPR coming full force in May, enterprises and multinational organisations face new challenges to their global data residency, privacy and security, given the restrictions imposed for cross-border data storage.
With the recent general availability of Multi-Geo capabilities in Office 365 and extended to Exchange Online and OneDrive, customer data can be easily stored and moved among multiple data centre geographies, relieving some of the pressure.
The Multi-Geo feature has been in preview for the past year. Now users and IT admins can finally specify a geographic location for data to get uploaded and stored for both mailbox contents (Exchange Online) and files (OneDrive).
The feature will enable an easy data transition between various locations, and specific sharing and configuration policies for each Geo location relevant to the type and sensitivity of the cloud-based customer data, as well as according to GDPR compliance policies for the specific region.
Another important benefit is the in-Geo data residency, business continuity and disaster recovery protocols enforced by Microsoft. The ability to host data in various geo-locations minimises the possibility of data breaches, theft and loss to the same server location and ensures speedy business uptake and damage control.
Furthermore, multinationals can move from managing multiple on-premises servers around the world to a single Multi-Geo enabled Office 365 tenant that addresses their global data residency needs.
The Multi-Geo has nine available geo-centres worldwide, including UK, USA, Australia and the European Union. However, the feature is not available for all Office 365 subscriptions, but limited to enterprises and customers with a minimum of 5.000 users.
The Multi-Geo capabilities may be supported by SharePoint Online, Office 365 Groups, and other Office 365 outlets in the future, according to Microsoft.
Read more on Microsoft.
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