Microsoft adds two new U.S. Windows Azure datacenters

Microsoft has made available to its cloud customers new service options in  two more U.S.-based Windows Azure datacenters, company officials announced on April 5.

Microsoft officials didn't mention the actual locations in a blog post announcing availability of the new facilities, beyond saying that one is somewhere in the western part of the country and the other, in the East. Microsoft is known to have picked West Des Moines, Iowa, as one of its new datacenter locations, so I'm thinking this is one of the new facilities. And maybe the already announced Southern Virginia location is the new Eastern one (?).

Compute and storage resources are available in both the "West US" and "East US" locations. Microsoft plans to add SQL Azure to the two datacenters "in the coming months," according to a post on the Windows Azure blog. The two new datacenters already are visible in the Azure Management Portal.

Microsoft is characterizing the addition of the two new datacenters as "significantly expand(ing) our US footprint."

Here's a slide from 2010 showing where Microsoft had built and planned to build its cloud-computing datacenters at that time. On that map were Microsoft's Quincy, Wash., and Boydton, Virg. datacenters. Its San Antonio and Chicago area datacenters weren't on there.

In other Azure news, Microsoft has created a new Windows Azure Trust Center site designed to help answer current and potential Azure customers' questions about regulatory compliance and certification issues.