Microsoft is expanding its cloud services footprint in Germany, Canada and into two new U.S. government regions.

Microsoft is making available in preview select Azure cloud services in the previously announced German and Canadian Azure regions, officials said on March 15.

The German region is especially interesting, as it's where Microsoft partnered with T-Systems, a Deutsche Telekom subsidiary, which is acting as a data trustee. The new region is called Azure Deutschland, and is Microsoft's testbed for finding creative ways to safeguard users' data.

The two German datacenters, located in Magdeburg and Frankfurt, will host Azure, Office 365 and Dynamics CRM Online, while providing users the option of having their data-access controlled by T-Systems acting as the trustee, rather than Microsoft.

The Canadian Azure datacenters are in Toronto and Quebec City.

Microsoft also is launching later this year two new Azure regions expressly for the U.S. Department of Defense. These new physically isolated regions within Azure Government -- US DoD East and West -- are for DoD data only and are designed to meet DoD Impact Level 5.

Microsoft's Azure Government cloud is close to achieving Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) Impact Level 4 authorization for controlled, unclassified information, Microsoft officials said. Microsoft made its Azure Government cloud offering available to U.S. government customers starting in December 2014.

"Microsoft Azure has now announced 30 regions globally with 22 regions generally available. The Canadian, Deutschland and Microsoft Cloud for Government regions are part of Microsoft's plans for eight new regions, all backed by Microsoft's $15 billion (USD) investment in global datacenter infrastructure," according to Microsoft's March 15 blog post.