Microsoft has confirmed its Saudi Arabia East data center region will be available to customers in November 2026, enabling government and private sector organizations to access supported Microsoft cloud and AI services, and host eligible workloads and data locally in the Kingdom.
In a press release, Microsoft said that the region was located in the Eastern Province and comprised three Azure Availability Zones. The new region aims to provide customers with local data residency, enterprise-grade security, high availability and low-latency access to cloud and AI services in line with Saudi Vision 2030.
“Saudi Arabia is building one of the world’s most ambitious AI-powered economies, enabled by strong partnerships and world-class digital infrastructure,” said Eng. Nasser AlNasser, Deputy Minister of Technology, Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT). “The availability of Microsoft’s cloud region in the Kingdom represents an important step in accelerating AI adoption, empowering innovators, entrepreneurs and organizations across all sectors to create new opportunities for growth and competitiveness.”
“Today’s milestone is about much more than bringing cloud infrastructure closer to our customers,” said Ayman AlGhamdi, President, Microsoft Arabia. “It is about giving organizations across Saudi Arabia the foundation to take AI from experimentation into everyday operations.”
Saudi organizations are already using Microsoft cloud and AI technologies, and the availability of local infrastructure will create new opportunities to bring more of these workloads into the Kingdom, and scale AI across sectors where data residency, security, resilience and latency are critical.
