While Microsoft already has a datacenter region in Brazil’s Sao Paulo, the Redmond giant has announced another datacenter region — Brazil Southeast — in the country based in Rio De Janeiro. The announcement of a new datacenter in Brazil is closely followed by the establishment of a new Azure datacenter region in Greece, hinting at Azure’s expansion plants.
The latest datacenter for Brazil has been announced under the “More for Brazil” plan by Microsoft. The plan by the cloud giant consists of establishing a new datacenter in the country, free digital skilling of 5.5 citizens, help in job matching for 25 million workers.
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Microsoft will use its Community Training Tool to offer 20 courses for training 5.5 million job-seekers in digital skills by 2023. Meanwhile, it donated cloud credits for enhancing Brazil’s employment system wherein Artificial Intelligence will be used to connect people with required skills to jobs or recommend courses for workers.
Tânia Cosentino, the President of Microsoft Brazil, spoke about the More for Brazil plan and stated, “today’s announcement demonstrates Microsoft’s commitment to supporting an inclusive economic recovery in Brazil. Through investments in skilling, expansion of our cloud infrastructure and commitment to supporting sustainability initiatives that preserve Brazil’s diverse ecosystem, we aim to promote new innovation and growth in the country.”
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Coming back to the expansion of Azure cloud in Brazil, Microsoft also stated that it would launch Azure Availability Zones in Brazil South in 2021 for ensuring high-availability for mission-critical workloads. Availability Zones come with fault tolerance capabilities to ensure delivery of services during datacenter failures through inbuilt redundancies.
The newly announced Brazil Southeast datacenter region will deliver Microsoft Azure, Microsoft 365, and Dynamics 365, and Power Platform cloud services for the region. The new region also marks the 65th announced datacenter region by Microsoft.
Other than the expansion of cloud services and skill training commitments, the Redmond giant also announced an initiative for helping the conservation of Amazon rainforests in Brazil. The company will partner with Vale, a mining company, and Imazon, a non-profit research group, to use Artificial Intelligence for preventing deforestation and fires in the Amazon forest in 2021. The partnership will include using AI and satellite imagery to predict zones prone to deforestation acts and fire-prone areas.
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