How Microsoft is addressing digital sovereignty in Switzerland

Microsoft Switzerland just launched a new website dedicated to one big topic that’s on everyone’s mind: digital sovereignty. In other words — how Swiss organizations can stay in control of their data while taking full advantage of the cloud. This can also be applied in other countries in the EMEA region.

You can check it out here: How Microsoft is addressing digital sovereignty in Switzerland.

So, what’s it all about?

The new site lays out Microsoft’s vision for helping Swiss businesses and public institutions answer three key questions:

• Where is my data stored?
• Who can access it?
• And do I still have full control?

To make this happen, Microsoft is rolling out a range of cloud options — from its Sovereign Public Cloud, which adds extra data-protection features to its existing European datacenters, to Sovereign Private Cloud setups that give organizations even more autonomy.

Swiss customers can already keep their data inside the country using Microsoft’s cloud regions in Zurich and Geneva.

Sovereign Public Cloud: Full sovereignty features—including data residency, encryption controls, and regulated environment management—are available in all European regions, including Switzerland. No migration to separate datacenters is required. 

Sovereign Private Cloud: For organizations needing maximum operational autonomy, Azure Local and Microsoft 365 Local enable workloads to run in customer controlled and on-premises hosted environments, with consistent management and security. 

Key Capabilities: Data Guardian (Europe-based access approval and monitoring), External Key Management (customer-held encryption keys), and Regulated Environment Management (centralized sovereignty controls). 

Open and Hybrid by Design: Azure Arc enables unified management across multi-cloud and on-premise environments, supporting hybrid and multi-vendor strategies. 

Control, transparency, and flexibility

A big part of this initiative is about giving customers real choices and options. For example:

• Choose the different Azure regions with cover your requirements on phyiscal data residency.
• EU Data Boundary means public‑sector and commercial customers in the EU/EFTA (including Switzerland) can store and process customer data, pseudonymized personal data, and professional services data including Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, Power Platform, and most Azure services within the EU/EFTA regions.
• With Data Guardian, we will add an additional level of assurance by ensuring that only Microsoft personnel residing in Europe control remote access to these systems. Data Guardian adds additional human and technical oversight whenever engineers outside of Europe need access.
• European digital commitments – five key digital commitments aimed at enhancing its operations and support for Europe, focusing on AI, cloud infrastructure, cybersecurity, and economic growth.
• The Sovereign Landing Zone (SLZ) is a variant of the enterprise scale Azure Landing Zone intended for organizations that need advanced sovereign controls. The SLZ helps these organizations meet their regulatory compliance requirements through Azure-native Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) and Policy-as-Code (PaC) capabilities. Using a configurable landing zone empowers organizations with tools to address their sovereignty needs by enforcing resources to be compliant with policies created in Azure Policy.
• Azure Confidential Computing enables encryption even while data is being processed.
• You can manage and bring your own encryption keys.
• External Key Management so you can keep encryption keys in your own HSMs (on‑premises or with a trusted third party).
• Regulated Environment Management to configure and monitor all sovereignty controls in one place.
• New Microsoft Sovereign Cloud specialization in the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program. This specialization will provide our European customers the ability to identify Partners who have differentiated themselves based on their demonstrated capabilities in supporting their Sovereign Cloud ambitions on Microsoft technology
• In France and Germany, our National Partner Clouds offer comprehensive capabilities of Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Azure in an independently owned and operated environment..
• and much more. Check out the website for more.

And for those with stricter regulatory needs who need workloads to run in a physically controlled environment, there are local and on-premises options such as Azure Local and Microsoft 365 Local. And with Microsoft’s hybrid by design approach, services like Azure Arc enable unified management across multi-cloud and on-premise environments, supporting hybrid and multi-vendor strategies.

Investing in Switzerland’s digital future

Microsoft isn’t just talking about sovereignty — it’s also investing heavily in Switzerland itself. The company plans to spend USD 400 million to expand its AI and cloud infrastructure (including GPU capacity) and support local innovation. It’s also committed to training one million people by 2027 in digital and AI skills.

Why it matters

Switzerland takes data privacy and independence seriously, and Microsoft’s new site is a signal that we are listening and explaining how Microsoft is addressing digital sovereignty in Switzerland. The message is simple: you can have the innovation of the public cloud without giving up control of your data. And for customer who need workloads to run in a physically controlled environment, including connected and disconnected scenarios, Microsoft offers Azure Local and Microsoft 365 Local together with Azure Arc.