Overview
- Microsoft framed Sovereign Cloud as a workload-based continuum that spans sovereign public clouds, customer-controlled Azure Local deployments, and partner-operated national clouds to let organizations pick control by workload.
- Foundry Local is now generally available on Azure Local to run local model inference and agentic retrieval, and GitHub Enterprise Local is moving to general availability as a prebuilt appliance for on-premises development.
- Key infrastructure and data services reached broad availability or preview: confidential virtual machines and SQL Server on Azure Local are generally available, while DocumentDB and Blob Storage on Azure Local entered public preview.
- Microsoft made external key management with Azure Managed HSM generally available and introduced a public preview to migrate Azure Local from connected to fully disconnected operations to support offline, customer-controlled deployments.
- Region-scoped oversight tools Data Guardian and Production Touch Ledger are rolling out in phased EU and EFTA deployments and many new capabilities remain preview-gated or limited to approved customers, meaning wider operational trust will depend on hardware qualification, partner arrangements, and procurement terms.