Azure Updates: European infrastructure; Red Hat OpenShift; SAP

Microsoft CVP Jessica Hawk explored how Microsoft is supporting European customers to meet their AI and cloud requirements. Public sector customers like the Manchester City Council in the UK are using Microsoft 365 Copilot to make their operations more streamlined, whereas Inriver uses Microsoft Foundry to transform product information, Hawk wrote.

In 2026, Microsoft has expanded into new markets in Europe. It has scaled capacity across new regions including Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Greece, and Finland. Currently, Microsoft has 80 datacenter regions in 34 countries to store data at rest and meet data residency requirements. Hawk wrote:

We’re expanding rapidly with a clear focus: helping customers scale as demand grows. We’re investing where customers are building and scaling critical workloads, and we’ll continue to grow our regional footprint with secure, resilient cloud and AI services—including sovereign solutions that help provide the control and deployment flexibility many organizations require.

In Scandinavia, Azure customers like Sandvik are focusing on manufacturing innovation, while municipal customers like the City of Stavanger increasingly consume cloud services. Microsoft is experimenting with free-air cooling, renewable energy matching, and rainwater harvesting to reduce the environmental impact of datacenters. 

The company is also focusing on different areas of digital transformation in Southern Europe. For instance, LaLiga in Spain is implementing AI-powered insights with Azure Arc, Amadeus is leveraging Databricks, and Factorial is scaling efficiently with AKS.