Sanctions imposed by the European Union on Russia following its war against Ukraine have reportedly prompted Microsoft to suspend access to its cloud services and business intelligence tools across the country by the end of the month, reports The Record, a news site by cybersecurity firm Recorded Future.
Such termination of Microsoft service access was disclosed by Russian tech firm and major Microsoft distributor Softline, which initially reported that access to Microsoft's products, including Azure, SQL Server, PowerShell, OneDrive, and PowerBI, will be suspended by Mar. 20. "This does not cancel the imposed restrictions, but it gives a realistic timeframe to collect the data and set up the operation of an alternative infrastructure," said Softline, which has already urged Russian organizations to back up data stored within foreign cloud services and migrate to homegrown cloud systems. The development comes months after Microsoft halted license renewals for products used by Russian firms.
