A Microsoft executive has responded to data sovereignty concerns surrounding Azure Australia by citing the company's past resistance against US government demands.
Steven Martin, Microsoft's global general manager for cloud and enterprise, visited the Australian headquarters in northern Sydney this week. At a press briefing he was asked what sort of assurance the vendor could give that data hosted in Australia on Azure would not be vulnerable to disclosure to foreign authorities.
"We think our track record in this area speaks far louder than anything else," said Martin.
He said that while the company would comply with all "applicable" laws, he pointed to cases like the recent legal battle against US prosecutors for email data held in Ireland as a reliable indicator of Microsoft's stance.
"Where we have been asked to do things that we think are not necessarily good for customers, we have appealed that," said Martin. "So an even better question would be to ask other providers, 'Why aren't you?'"
Microsoft Australia boss Pip Marlow announced the start of a local presence for its cloud platform at the Australia Partner Conference two weeks ago. Since that news, partners and customers have asked what that means for data sovereignty and security.
Martin said that with the industry evolving, the relevance of geographical security could be questioned if other data protection measures were already in place.
"If the data is completely encrypted, does location matter? Does it exist in another place if no-one else can get access to it?"
Microsoft Australia's cloud and enterprise lead Toby, Bowers, said that customers with security concerns could keep sensitive data in-house as part of a hybrid cloud solution.
Martin and Bowers could not reveal the details of its Australian data centre presence, but did say that customers and partners would receive enough information to ensure any DR systems are not hosted at the same site as Azure.
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