Microsoft announced this summer: Microsoft 365 Local, an on-premises version of the well-known Microsoft 365 tools such as Word, Excel, Teams, and Outlook. This solution is part of Microsoft's Sovereign Private Cloud, which allows customers to run their productivity tools in a controlled environment under their own management.

What is Microsoft 365 Local?

  • Runs entirely within an organization’s own infrastructure or in a local, controlled cloud (Azure Local).

  • Provides organizations the ability to deploy Microsoft productivity servers such as Exchange Server en SharePoint Server to run in their own data centers.

  • Suitable for sectors and organisations that want full control over data, compliance and governance.

Important licensing and implementation points

  • License management must be tailored to the number of users, type of workloads and scale of the deployment.

  • Microsoft 365 Local can be deployed within private or sovereign cloud environments, including partner-operated data centers such as the National Partner Clouds in France and Germany.

Integration with Microsoft Sovereign Cloud

  • Microsoft 365 Local is integrated with Azure Local, which provides consistent management and development experiences, even in hybrid or siloed environments.

  • It is part of a broader set of sovereign cloud solutions (Sovereign Public Cloud, Sovereign Private Cloud, National Partner Clouds) giving European customers control over data residency, compliance and operational autonomy.

Availability

  • The rollout will start in Europe (France and Germany), with wider availability later this year.

  • Microsoft 365 Local is currently available in preview, with the full release planned for later this year.