Microsoft is planning to add Brazil as its newest Windows Azure Region in early 2014.

Company officials announced the expansion plans on December 4, noting that Microsoft will begin to onboard preview customers in that region in the next four to six weeks.

The Brazilian Region will represent Microsoft's "first major expansion" into South America. The company already announced in the past year expansions into Japan, Australia and China.

In 2010, Microsoft did a "country launch" for Brazil, allowing customers there to make use of its Azure public cloud. But these users' data wasn't stored in country. The new region support means Brazilian users will be able to keep their data in the country, Microsoft officials noted in today's Azure blog post.

"As the rules and regulations on data management continue to evolve in Brazil, customers using the Brazil Region will be able to opt for Locally Redundant Storage (LRS), which will maintain three copies of their data and will not replicate their data outside of the country. Geo Redundant Storage (GRS) remains the default option when creating a storage account because it provides our highest level of durability by storing data in a second region, in this case our US South Central region for customers using the Brazil Region as their primary," blogged Azure General Manager Steven Martin.