Data residency in the AI era: New capabilities to manage your data

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Paul Lorimer Corporate Vice President, Office 365 Enterprise and Cloud Engineering | Microsoft

In January, we updated our Microsoft Copilot product line-up to expand Copilot for Microsoft 365 to more businesses and announced no seat minimum for commercial plans.

Now we’re excited to announce the expansion of Microsoft’s data residency capabilities by adding content of interactions with Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365 to our portfolio of data residency commitments and offerings. We are expanding our product terms and Microsoft 365 data residency offerings to contractually guarantee that we will store the content of your interactions with Copilot for Microsoft 365 in the same country or region in which you store your existing Microsoft 365 content.   

Since the early days of cloud computing, Microsoft has built our products and services with security, privacy, compliance, and transparency at their foundation. We know that you’re entrusting us with one of your most valuable assets—your data. Our time-tested approach to data privacy is grounded in our commitment to give you control over the data you put in the cloud, and this includes where you store it. The tremendous advancements AI has brought to productivity, security, and learning have placed a spotlight on these foundational data privacy and residency commitments, but they haven’t changed them. The technology has evolved, but our values are consistent. 

New Copilot for Microsoft 365 data commitments and offerings 

With this announcement, you have the assurance that content for interaction data with Copilot for Microsoft 365 will be stored according to your specified data storage location for Microsoft 365 data. This commitment only applies to customers whose tenants are provisioned in specific geographies, with add-on options available for additional geographies below. You can already delete content of interactions data with Copilot for Microsoft 365 at any time. 

Microsoft 365 provides an array of data storage options to help support your data residency and privacy obligations. Each of the following also applies to content of interactions with Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365. 

  • Product Terms Data Residency provides data residency commitments for Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, and Microsoft Teams in the following country and regions: Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, India, Japan, Norway, Qatar, South Africa, South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, United States, and the European Union.  
  • Advanced Data Residency add-on (ADR) provides eligible customers with expanded coverage of Microsoft 365 workloads, committed data residency in local datacenter regions, and prioritized tenant migration services. ADR is available in all the regions covered by Product Terms Data Residency, as well as Poland, Italy, and Israel with new local data center regions in Mexico and Spain coming soon. 
  • Multi-Geo Capabilities add-on provides customers with the ability to expand their Microsoft 365 presence to multiple geographic regions within a single existing Microsoft 365 tenant. Multi-Geo Capabilities are available in the same set of local regions as ADR plus the three macro regions—Americas, Asia-Pacific, and European Union. Please review details for covered workloads. 
  • EU Data Boundary allows customers in the European Union and the European Free Trade Association to keep their data in the EU. 
What’s next?

We have updated our commitments to reflect the inclusion of Copilot for Microsoft 365 content interaction data. Customers within the scope of these commitments can rest assured that this data will be stored within their local region. Later this year, we will expand the Data Location Card in the Microsoft 365 admin center to include Copilot for Microsoft 365. This Data Location Card currently allows Microsoft 365 customers to view their specific geographic storage location for Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, and Microsoft Teams. For customers using the ADR add-on, the Data Location Card offers additional transparency of geo location for extended workloads.   

We encourage you to contact your Microsoft account team to learn about the options available to manage your organization’s data, and especially whether Advanced Data Residency or Multi-Geo capabilities would help meet your data residency needs.  

Our vision for Microsoft Copilot is to bring the power of generative AI to everyone. Thank you for your trust in us as we continue this journey together.  

Learn more about Microsoft Copilot and visit the Copilot for Work site for actionable guidance on how you can start transforming work with Copilot today.

Take the power of AI on the go with the Copilot app—your everyday AI companion. Download now for a one-month free trial of Copilot Pro.   

For critical research insights on the future of work and generative AI, subscribe to WorkLab

Microsoft Copilot was used as an assistant to write and edit this blog.

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