Some countries require or strongly recommend to store company data in local datacenters.
If you are an early adopter of Office 365 and in your country new Microsoft datacenters were opened you may want to move your data there.
Microsoft improves Azure services located globally by available datacenters called Regions. All Office 365 services are based in Azure Regions. The number of regions is systematically increased based on business needs. Below you can check Office 365 datacenter map with listed locations.
Microsoft delivers new regions in Countries where clients require to store the data locally within the country. For instance, two new regions were opened in the last months in Switzerland. One located in Geneva and one in Zurich. Thanks to that Swiss companies will have a simpler way to move their data to the cloud.
You can learn more about data recidency on Azure platforms on Microsoft portal.
Who and when can request a data move
Microsoft allows requesting the change of data residency for early adopters of Office 365. To get the possibility to use the geolocation date move your tenant had to exist before new data center were launched and signup country chosen during registration has to be the location of the new region.
For instance in case of Switzerland Office 365 tenant need be created before August 2019 and Switzerland had be choosen during signup process.
Most of the new regions allow users to request the data residency change until 30 June 2020. A detailed calendar for all new regions:
| Signup country | Request period begins | Request deadline |
|---|---|---|
| Japan | January 1, 2020 | June 30, 2020 |
| Australia, New Zealand, Fiji | January 1, 2020 | June 30, 2020 |
| India | January 1, 2020 | June 30, 2020 |
| Canada | January 1, 2020 | June 30, 2020 |
| United Kingdom | January 1, 2020 | June 30, 2020 |
| South Korea | January 1, 2020 | June 30, 2020 |
| France | January 1, 2020 | June 30, 2020 |
| United Arab Emirates | July 15, 2019 | June 30, 2020 |
| South Africa | July 25, 2019 | June 30, 2020 |
| Switzerland, Liechtenstein | December 10, 2019 | June 30, 2020 |
| Germany | Planned | Planned |
The most current data residency change plan you will find on Microsoft Docs Site.
How to request Office 365 data move
To send the request for the change of your data residency.
1. Open Office 365
Open Office 365 site using https://office.com address. In Office site choose Admin button.
2. Open Organization Profile
When you will open Admin site choose Settings (1), Settings (2) and then Organization profile (3).
3. Check your data location
You can check your data location by choosing Data location section. This option will display information about the location of your data.
Detailed information about physical localization of your data is published on Microsoft Azure Site.
4. Request the move of your data
To request migration of your data to new data center you have to choose Data Residency Option section.
If you don’t see this section your tenant is not assigned to early dat move or your data is already in target Region. Check Data location section to confirm that. In cases where your data is located in wrong region and this option is not available contact with Microsoft via service ticket.
In Data residency section choose Opt-in button
In new windows confirm the switch button to Yes and choose Save button.
Please note that Microsoft reserve 24 months to deliver the change of your data residency. They’re also no clear information when exactly this operation will be executed. You need to be patient.
Hello. My name is Sergey – I am the system administrator of the I25S company.
At the moment, the company is changing its physical location – from Denmark to Lichtenstein.
I was asked to perform the transfer of the tenant of the company (legally).
Please tell me what is the procedure for the “transfer” of the tenant.
(at the moment we are using Word, Excel and Dynamics apps – CRM and ERP- is it possible to transfer everything painlessly. and how will it be more correct?
Thanks
Hello Sergey, Remember that you can migrate only through Azure datacenters. Here is a list of datacenters: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/global-infrastructure/geographies/#geographies
Hello. My name is Amit – I am working as system administrator in my company.
At the moment, We are facing bill payment issue due to RBI guideline so Now we want to changing the office 365 account location without any data lose – from UK to India.
I was asked to perform the transfer of the tenant of the company (legally).
Please tell me what is the procedure for the “transfer” of the tenant.
is it possible to transfer everything painlessly. and how will it be more correct?
Amit I recommend contacting Microsoft and reviewing the possibility to change your data residency. If there will not be a way to change the data residency you will need to create a new tenant and do the migration. It is challenging, migration project. There are no out-of-the-box tools to do that.
Is it possible to move tenant register in US to Sweden?
I believe in most cases you will need to do the tenant migration – which is quite a heavy project.
Follow the article description about included data migration. If you do not have such an option I recommend contacting Microsoft to review available options.
Hi Szymon,
I am helping a friend with his small business (around 60 staff) and noticed the tenant country is not correct but more important the data is not in my country, it was setup in the wrong country initially. I am in Australia and would like to migrate the data from Asia Pacific (which is where it is now) I spoke MS support but they can only tell me my window to migrate has closed (which I know) what should I do? Can I cancel my subscription then start a new subscription within the same tenant? or am i forced to create a new tenancy and migrate everything across manually? If it is a manual transfer, are there any instructions available that can guide me? Thank you in Advance, Derek
Hi Derek,
I’m worried that the only way at the moment is a tenant-to-tenant migration 😔
The complexity of the migration will strongly depend on the volume of your data. You will need to migrate multiple components:
– Azure AD accounts
– Exchange mailboxes – https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/enterprise/cross-tenant-mailbox-migration?view=o365-worldwide
– SharePoint, Teams, OneDrive data – Sharegate could be the answer for that.
But as you can see this will be a complex and costly process. If there are no legal requirements to do the change I would find the budget for it first.