Azure Cloud: How to choose the right model for your business?
Public, local, connected, disconnected… Behind the word cloud, there is now a wide variety of environments, each designed to meet very different needs. For companies, the challenge is no longer simply to 'move to the cloud,' but to choose the right operating model — in the right place, at the right time.
At Proximus NXT, we support organizations in this strategic transition with a comprehensive portfolio of Azure solutions covering the entire spectrum: from global public cloud to sovereign and disconnected environments.
Microsoft Azure is not limited to a single cloud, but offers a complete ecosystem of solutions tailored to different needs: performance, sovereignty, connectivity, local control, or full autonomy.
Proximus NXT supports companies in navigating this diversity of options to find the right balance between innovation, security, and compliance.
Overview of the Azure solutions offered by Proximus NXT
Network add-on: *ExpressRoute POP: for environments requiring stability, privacy, and network performance, it is the private highway that directly links your infrastructure to the cloud.
Azure Public Cloud
Azure Public Cloud represents the most complete and open form of Microsoft’s cloud.
It is the ideal environment for companies seeking agility, scalability, and access to innovation, particularly in AI and data.
You benefit from the full catalog of Azure services, deployed across globally interconnected data centers.
- Ideal for: innovation-driven companies, scale-ups, or organizations looking to accelerate their digital transformation without infrastructure constraints.
- Key benefits: continuous innovation, elasticity, controlled costs, high availability.
Azure Public Cloud with Sovereign Controls
This variant combines the agility of the public cloud with enhanced sovereignty and compliance controls.
Data is hosted and processed exclusively within the European Union, under the governance of European legal entities.
It meets regulatory requirements related to DORA, NIS2, GDPR, and data localization policies.
- Ideal for: public institutions, banks, critical operators, and companies subject to strict regulatory frameworks.
- Key benefits: European compliance, legal trust, native integration within the Azure ecosystem.
Azure Extended Zone
Extended Zones are local extensions of the Azure public cloud, with a first zone planned in Luxembourg in 2026.
They allow you to bring your workloads closer to end users while remaining fully integrated within the Azure environment.
Result: minimal latency, high availability, and local data residency.
- Ideal for: companies requiring low latency or subject to local data residency requirements.
- Key benefits: performance, proximity, operational continuity.
Azure Local
Azure Local brings the power of the cloud into your own premises.
Azure services are deployed there on-premises or with the partner of your choice, while remaining connected to the public cloud for monitoring, updates, and security.
This hybrid model offers the best of both worlds: local control and cloud flexibility.
- Ideal for: sensitive sectors (healthcare, defense, industry) and organizations prioritizing physical data control.
- Key benefits: sovereignty, flexibility, seamless integration with Azure.
Azure Local Disconnected (ALDO)
Designed for the most critical contexts, ALDO allows Azure services to run in a fully autonomous environment, without any connection to the cloud.
This solution is aimed at disconnected sites, critical infrastructures, or environments subject to very high security requirements, both regulatory and critical.
- Ideal for: sovereign, military, industrial, or defense infrastructures.
- Key benefits: complete autonomy, maximum security, operational resilience.
*Azure ExpressRoute POP
The private and secure gateway to the Azure ecosystem.
Azure ExpressRoute is not a cloud offering per se, but a private connectivity service.
It enables a secure, stable, and low-latency connection between your infrastructure and Azure.
It is the preferred solution for organizations that want to integrate their network with the cloud without going through the public Internet.
- Ideal for: large enterprises, critical operators, hybrid environments.
- Key benefits: security, performance, confidentiality of communications.
Proximus NXT Expertise: More than a Cloud, a Strategy
The real challenge is not to choose a single model, but to build a hybrid ecosystem that meets your business priorities: security, availability, compliance, and performance.
At Proximus NXT Luxembourg, our role is to architect and orchestrate these environments:
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Secure network integration via ExpressRoute;
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Support on governance and compliance (DORA, NIS2, GDPR);
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Optimization of resilience and costs (FinOps and automation);
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Monitoring and support through our Service Operations Center.
Assess the criticality of your workloads
Not all data needs to be in the same cloud
Plan connectivity from the start
Latency and bandwidth often determine actual performance
Secure access and identities
Adopt the Zero Trust model
Maintain financial control
Monitor your usage and optimize with FinOps tools.
Anticipate updates
Especially for offline environments
Assess the criticality of your workloads
Not all data needs to be in the same cloud
Secure access and identities
Adopt the Zero Trust model
Anticipate updates
Especially for offline environments
Plan connectivity from the start
Latency and bandwidth often determine actual performance
Maintain financial control
Monitor your usage and optimize with FinOps tools.
Microsoft strengthens its sovereign cloud capabilities (November 2025)
Microsoft has just announced a major new step in its sovereign cloud strategy. The goal: to enable European organizations to combine innovation—particularly in artificial intelligence—with full control over their data.
This evolution revolves around several key updates:
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AI Data Processing in the EU: European customers will now be able to process their AI models without transferring data outside the European Union.
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Sovereign Landing Zone (SLZ): A new pre-configured deployment environment that integrates sovereignty controls and best practices by default.
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Evolution of Azure Local: The on-premises version of Azure gains power, with support for AI workloads, next-generation GPUs, and advanced storage options.
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"Digital Sovereignty" Specialization for Partners: A certification that structures the ecosystem around digital trust issues.
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Data Guardian (coming soon): An enhanced control feature that allows limiting external access and applying advanced privacy policies.
These announcements confirm that sovereignty is no longer a barrier to innovation, but rather a catalyst for sustainable cloud adoption.
Every company is at a different stage of its cloud transformation.
Whether it's deploying an Azure Local datacenter, optimizing your network with ExpressRoute, or improving performance with Extended Zones, our experts are here to guide you at every step.
Discover how to combine these solutions to enhance your company's sovereignty, performance, and security.
