Tag Archives: Azure Local

Azure FAQs

Microsoft have updated their Azure FAQs.

A major section on Azure Local has been added, with 15 new questions outlining its use cases, hardware and deployment configurations, and billing and operational policies.

Subscribers can find the current and historical versions of this FAQs website with our PDF captures in the Licensing Guides Gallery. We also provide the full details of “What’s New” and of course, what’s wrong, with our “Cautionary Notes” that help you navigate any stumbling blocks. In the meantime, find a copy here: https://bit.ly/4aSbkIK.

Azure FAQs

Microsoft have updated the Azure FAQs.

The revised document includes a chunky new section at the end, all about Azure Local. A set of 15 new questions details its use cases, hardware and deployment configuration options, and billing and operational policies.

Whilst the live Microsoft website only displays the current version of these FAQs, we track and preserve all changes to the various online licensing guidance. If you’re a subscriber, you can always check out the details of what’s new (and what’s wrong!) in our Licensing Guides Gallery: https://bit.ly/GuidesGallery. In the meantime, find the latest capture here: https://bit.ly/4aSbkIK.

Microsoft 365 Local and SE products

Microsoft introduced us to the notion of their Sovereign Private Cloud in June 2025 (see the announcement here: https://bit.ly/3KYvuqj). It’s designed for customers who need to meet strict sovereignty requirements and combines Azure Local and Microsoft 365 Local. Azure Local’s been around a while, but Microsoft 365 Local is new. It’s built on the Azure Local infrastructure, and enables organisations to deploy the traditional Exchange Server, SharePoint Server, and Skype for Business Server products entirely within their sovereign environment. To that end, the new SE versions of these products will be supported until at least 31 December, 2035.

Find information on Microsoft 365 Local here: https://bit.ly/3Wosztx, and the earliest End of Support date information here: https://bit.ly/48QNrRC.

Azure Local

Microsoft introduce Azure Local for customers to run Azure services on their own infrastructure. It’s enabled by Azure Arc and provides cloud-connected capabilities at a customer’s distributed locations. Think of it as the evolution of Azure Stack and, indeed, Azure Stack HCI has already been renamed to Azure Local.

There’s no change to the pricing or licensing for Azure Stack HCI customers, they’ll just get new Azure Local features as they’re available. At this time Azure Stack Hub and Azure Stack Edge remain, but there are “lower-spec hardware” and “disconnected operations” solutions in preview in Azure Local which will be the Azure Localisation of these Azure Stack components in due course.

Find the announcement here: https://bit.ly/4eCWKUr .