Microsoft customers based in the U.K. can now access local data center facilities for the first time, after the cloud giant announced the opening of new hosting locations for Azure and Office 365 in London, Cardiff and Durham. Dynamics CRM Online will also be hosted in the U.K., beginning early next year.

Previously, Microsoft’s U.K. customers who wished to keep their data within Europe had their applications and data farmed out to facilities in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, or Ireland. With the opening of its U.K. facilities, Microsoft is hoping to satisfy the demands of some British firms that require local data residency and replication to ensure business continuity.

In a blog post, Microsoft said it was the “first global provider” of a “complete cloud” available from U.K. data centers. Given that Amazon Web Services had previously announced plans to open its own U.K. data center facilities by early 2017 at the latest, those comments were clearly a dig at AWS. Still, AWS remains the leader in cloud services according to most analysts, with Azure generally considered to be the number two.

The new U.K. data centers mean that Microsoft now offers Azure coverage across 28 regions. Takeshi Numoto, corporate vice president for Microsoft Cloud and Enterprise, indicated in a blog post that six additional data centers were “coming soon for a total of 34, more than any other major cloud provider.”

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella first mentioned the company’s plans to build data centers in the U.K. back in 2015, at its Future Decoded event.

Along with the announcement, Microsoft also boasted that the U.K.’s Ministry of Defence was among its first customers to be using its new facilities. The department uses both Azure and Office 365. Other customers who’ll be localizing their Microsoft data include luxury sports car maker Aston Martin Lagonda Ltd., an existing Office 365 customer, as well as business process management and outsourcing firm Capita Plc, and the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust.

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