Microsoft Sovereign Private Cloud scales to thousands of nodes with Azure Local

By Dustin Ward

Today, I am pleased to announce that Azure Local now scales to support deployments of up to thousands of servers within a single sovereign environment, allowing organizations to run much larger workloads locally across large-footprint datacenters, industrial environments and edge locations while maintaining control within their sovereign boundary. Organizations operating national infrastructure, regulated workloads or…

Introducing Azure Accelerate for Databases: Modernize your data for AI with experts and investments

By Dustin Ward

In this article Database modernization: Why now? Why Azure Accelerate for Databases? What you can do with Azure Accelerate for Databases Unlock savings and investments Get started with Azure Accelerate for Databases Database modernization: Why now? We consistently hear common realities from leaders: data infrastructure is a critical accelerator for AI adoption, and many organizations…

Microsoft named a Leader in The Forrester Wave™ for Sovereign Cloud Platforms

By Dustin Ward

Digital sovereignty is no longer a niche requirement. For organizations operating across borders, regulated industries, and complex supply chains, sovereignty is now table stakes for cloud strategy. That’s why we’re pleased that Microsoft has been named a Leader in The Forrester Wave TM: Sovereign Cloud Platforms, Q2 2026 – an evaluation that assessed the most…

Building sovereign AI at the edge: Microsoft and Armada collaborate to deliver Azure Local on Galleon modular datacenters

By Dustin Ward

As governments and regulated industries continue their digital transformation, one requirement consistently rises to the top: the ability to run mission critical workloads where data originates, while maintaining sovereignty, resilience, and control. Build sovereign edge solutions with Azure Local Today, I am pleased to announce a collaboration between Microsoft and Armada to deliver a practical…

Navigating digital sovereignty at the frontier of transformation

By Dustin Ward

Digital sovereignty is no longer a theoretical debate or a narrow compliance exercise. For leaders across governments, regulated industries, and critical infrastructure sectors, it has become a practical leadership discipline grounded in risk management, continuity planning, and long-term accountability. Over the past several years, we have seen customer concerns evolve materially. Early conversations focused primarily…

Advancing agentic AI with Microsoft databases across a unified data estate

By Dustin Ward

This week, we are excited to kick off SQLCon 2026 alongside FabCon in Atlanta. Bringing these SQL and Fabric communities together creates a unique opportunity to learn, connect, and share what’s next across the Microsoft databases portfolio. This year is especially meaningful, as it marks the return of a Microsoft‑led SQL community event, while also…