Azure Belgium Central (ABC)

Digital AmBEtion is Microsoft’s holistic multi-year investment plan designed to accelerate the digital transformation of Belgium’s public and private sector.

Digital AmBEtion includes three pillars:

• providing world-class digital infrastructure,
• helping citizens develop digital skills,
• creating sustainable societal impact.

Central to the plan, Microsoft will establish a new datacenter region that delivers advanced data security and cloud solutions, offering Belgian organizations local data residency and faster access to the cloud.​

With this new datacenter region, Belgium will join the largest cloud infrastructure in the world and be part of a network of more than 65 datacenter regions. Companies of all sizes and from every sector will have access to Microsoft Azure at launch.

With it, anyone will be able to develop purposefully with the help of cloud services. Numerous technologies such as unlimited computing power, databases, artificial intelligence and ‘Internet of Things’ (IoT) will soon be at your fingertips.

1. Envisioning

Azure Belgium Central is designed to meet the needs of businesses of all sizes, whether you’re a startup looking to scale quickly or an enterprise with complex computing requirements. With our cloud services, you can easily store and process vast amounts of data, run mission-critical applications, and connect with customers and partners.

Take a quick look and see that it’s not only about bricks!

Our shiny new Azure region will consist of 3 physical locations, each of them completely redundant in terms of power, cooling and networking which we typically describe as Availability Zones.

Although a bit smaller in size than our Hero region datacenters, they come with a serious punch.

2. Certification & Specializations

Certifications

At Microsoft we always say: Every partner is a certified partner. Certifications and Partner designations acknowledge your expertise and help you become even more successful.

Although there are no specific certifications for ABC, having several of your employees successfully passing the below certifications should be considered as a minimum to become ABC Ready:

Since ABC touches a lot of other domains (such as Data, networking, etc.), it is recommended to also check out other certifications. We will help you to construct a learning plan strategy based on your needs.

Specializations

For instance, when you, as a partner have attained the Solution partner designation for Infrastructure , you can then take things a even a step further to differentiate yourself by achieving any of the eligible specializations.

3. Technical Enablement

To help you, our partners, take advantage of the opportunities that ABC has in store make sure to checkout our
ABC ready series of webinars designed to help you get started and become:

Click The Badge To Register

We will be hosting new sessions with exciting content throughout FY24 so make sure to check in regularly!

4. Design & Build

Building for impact - Together

The pages listed/linked/referenced below focus each on a specific area (taxonomy) that we deem important when building solutions. The idea is that they exist to inspire our partners with the concepts/technologies (that are relevant today) when they start building solutions.

The Microsoft commercial marketplace

When building solutions, it is great that you can build them and make them available towards customers, but it is even better that you can leverage the existing Microsoft Platforms (Microsoft Marketplace (for Azure) and Microsoft AppSource (business oriented)) to reach even more customers. Take a look at the below resources which are all great materials to get started:

More textual info can be found in the following Microsoft docs intro/overview page

5. Grow your business