As the latest hybrid cloud computing innovation from Microsoft Azure Stack enhances Azure’s pre-existing cloud computing services.
Businesses are increasingly opting for it to help them mitigate the constraints of data sovereignty, such as country regulatory policies, compliance issues, time-access problems, and geographical immobility.
As more Egyptian companies adopt hybrid cloud-based solutions, Azure Stack enables them to enjoy on-premise security combined with the deployment speed and unlimited features of a public cloud.
Combating Data Sovereignty With Microsoft Azure Stack
Data sovereignty comes into play when an organization stores its data outside of their country, leaving it subject to that country’s laws.
Some geographies like Egypt, have rigid data regulations in place – which include where organizations store data, how they handle it and what compliance issues it is subject to.
Since a large majority of companies in the region are executing a cloud-first approach, these regulations can present significant challenges to Egyptian organizations. Moreover, these regulations require financial and other confidential data to be located in-country, challenging cloud-based solutions and public cloud giants that host and run services outside the country’s borders.
Given data sovereignty issues, the main concern for most businesses is maintaining privacy regulations while preventing foreign governments from being able to subpoena data. Moreover, fulfilling clients’ needs for high-performance analytics resources on the public cloud was nearly impossible.
A hybrid cloud approach, like Microsoft Azure Stack, solves many of the problems posed by data sovereignty, by enabling companies to maintain their customers’ status quo while simultaneously following country regulation laws.
With Azure Stack, businesses can access the power of a hybrid production environment to run intensive Azure consistent workloads more quickly on a private cloud. They can also sync to mirrored Azure services on the public cloud while maintaining compliance with data sovereignty laws.
As such, businesses can choose to deploy specific applications and data to the Azure public cloud as well as what data needs to be kept within their on-premise environment.
Additionally, organizations can deploy hybrid cloud solutions that are API compatible with their public cloud service provider – making data processing even more seamless.
Offshore data centers in distant locations are harder to monitor compared to local ones. Moreover, cities like Egypt are simply more vulnerable to internal conflict and government intrusions that simply worsen the data sovereignty issue.
Data Sovereignty And Deployment In Egypt
An extreme example of government intervention comes from the 2011 suspension of internet services in the Arab spring. The useful expedient of blocking access to internal and foreign critical packet routing infrastructure, for all except a small group of government networks.
In an interview with the Daily News Egypt, Microsoft Cloud Business Group Lead, Ahmed El Salmy said
that Azure Stack’s solutions for data hosting hold a wide range of competitive advantages compared to
cloud computing.
Azure Stack differs from traditional cloud computing services, enabling organizations to benefit from
apps capable of running without an internet connection.
Microsoft Azure Stack enables companies to access a subset of Azure services within their own data
center. Moreover, given that Microsoft Azure and Microsoft Azure Stack have consistent developer
tools, the API allows your company to build their applications once and then deploy to public or private
clouds depending on the data regulations.
This way, you can deploy any application with data sovereignty restrictions on-premises, while
simultaneously utilizing the Azure public cloud for your other applications.
This feature proves to be a viable solution for businesses that want to keep their data separate from the
internet as well as in geographical locations where internet connection is difficult to establish.
Egyptian organizations are steadily tackling data sovereignty challenges with Microsoft Azure Stack.
At LDC we use HPE (Hewlett Packard Enterprise) ProLiant for Microsoft Azure Stack, helping clients in
financial and government industries deploy applications in data centers around the world while
maintaining sensitive data within Egypt’s borders.
In Conclusion
As the Egyptian government strives to compete with global changes and organizations seek to digitally
transform, there is unlimited potential for the growth of cloud computing technologies in Egypt and the
MENA region.
Hybrid cloud solutions like Microsoft Azure Stack are helping businesses in the Middle East and Egypt
solve data sovereignty challenges, helping organizations leverage the performance and security of
on-premise hosting as well as the agility and speed of public cloud solutions.
It’s time to reach beyond traditional data centers and manage a hybrid connected system that’s built
specifically for your business.