Microsoft will not block access to cloud services for individuals in Russia - RTVI
The company will make cloud services unavailable only for legal entities
Microsoft has informed its corporate clients that it will not block access to its products for individuals in Russia on the night of 20-21 March, RTVI reports, citing a source in the IT market.
The company will make its cloud services unavailable only to legal entities registered in the country.
The RTVI report says that the exact list of Microsoft products subject to the restrictions has not yet been published. According to the publication, the blocking will affect all cloud services. The list published by RTVI includes:
- Microsoft Teams video conferencing system;
- Microsoft OneDrive cloud storage;
- Microsoft Azure cloud platform;
- Microsoft Office 365 suite of web services (including Excel);
- Microsoft SQL Server database management system;
- Microsoft System Centre, a suite of products for managing the corporate IT environment.
The shutdown will also affect the free versions of the Power BI Pro analytics platform, the Azure Devops programme, and educational products. MS Visio and Office keys will also be blocked.
Whether Microsoft intends to delete the data of Russian companies from the cloud storage is currently unknown, RTVI clarifies.
Earlier, The Insider wrote that on 15 March, Microsoft sent a warning to Russian companies about the closure of access to several cloud products.
In March 2022, after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Microsoft announced that it would stop selling products and services in Russia. In August 2023, it became known that the company would stop renewing subscriptions to Microsoft 365 (Outlook, Teams, Office, OneDrive, Sharepoint) for corporate clients in Russia after 30 September due to sanctions. At the time, the head of the Ministry of Digital Transformation, Maksut Shadayev, said that "many people are switching to Russian operating systems based on Linux" and that Russia has an alternative to American software.
Background. As previously reported, Russian businesses were cut off from Microsoft's cloud services because EU sanctions made it impossible to supply "certain software".
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