Microsoft takes an important step towards "EU Data Boundary": allowing EU cloud customers to store data locally.

Zhitong App learned that the American tech giant Microsoft has announced that cloud computing customers from the European Union will be able to store all their personal data within the broad boundaries of Europe. As the first step of the EU Data Boundary plan, which will be gradually implemented by 2023, Microsoft is now able to store and process customer data for Microsoft 365, Azure, Power Platform, and Dynamics 365 services within the EU Data Boundary. The tech giant also stated that it is expanding its local storage and processing system in the EU to eventually include all personal data, such as automated system logs. This makes Microsoft the first major cloud provider to offer this high-level data residency to European customers. After the EU introduced privacy and security legislation, tech companies from the United States have been introducing data storage and processing capabilities located at the EU border. In October 2023, Amazon's global cloud computing giant AWS announced that it would allow data to be stored on servers located in the EU. In December 2023, Microsoft fully launched "Microsoft" in all Azure cloud service regions in the EU. Later this year, Microsoft will introduce the next phase of its EU Data Boundary for Microsoft Azure cloud services by changing the processing and storage capabilities of the data required during technical support interactions. Julie Brill, Vice President and Chief Privacy Officer of Microsoft, stated in a blog post on Thursday, "We will ensure that data is stored within the boundaries of the EU. When customers need to access databases from outside the EU to achieve world-class data support, we will impose restrictions while ensuring any temporary data transfers required through virtual desktop-level infrastructure and other technical means." Brill added that Microsoft is also developing future-oriented paid support options that will provide initial technical responses based on the internal EU system. Due to concerns about the prospects of iPhone sales, Apple (AAPL.US) has recently seen a continuous decline in its stock price, which puts the tech giant at risk of being overtaken by Microsoft and losing its position as the "stock king" of the world's highest market value. Apple's current market value is $2.866 trillion, but it seems to have failed to keep up with the global AI boom. On the other hand, Microsoft, relying on its status as a major shareholder of OpenAI, has embedded the pride of OpenAI, the GPT-4 model, into its flagship applications such as the Office suite, making it the absolute leader in AI applications worldwide. With a soaring stock price throughout 2023, Microsoft's market value is now $2.837 trillion. Apple's market value reached its peak of $3.081 trillion on December 14th last year, while Microsoft's market value reached its peak of $2.844 trillion on November 28th last year. It is worth noting that since 2018, Microsoft's market value has briefly surpassed Apple several times, with the most recent occurrence in 2021. At that time, concerns over supply chain shortages caused by the COVID-19 pandemic significantly impacted Apple's stock price.