Office 365 – Accessing the Australia Office 365 Data Center for NZ

Greg Olsen, 02 March 2015

As I write this article, New Zealand (NZ) Office 365 subscribers have their services hosted out of a data center in Singapore.  The distance from New Zealand to Singapore is a good length, which means it can take a bit longer for our client requests in NZ to hit the servers in Singapore meaning Latency can be an issue for some customers.

We have known for a while now that there is a new data center in Australia. Actually two of them. One in Sydney and the other in Melbourne. This is great news. Since geographically Australia is closer to NZ than Singapore, this will mean greater speed connections and a drop in latency. The new service includes two geo-redundant sub regions in NSW and Victoria.

But the question now for customers is … how do I access the Australia Office 365 data center or move my existing Office 365 subscription to Australia from Singapore? Well, this article will provide you with options for those queries.

When is it scheduled for release?

The Australian data center is planned to start taking new subscriptions from March this year. Remember these are for new sign-ups of Office 365.

When is my Office 365 instance scheduled to be moved?

Standard Office 365 instance moves from Singapore to Australia will commence in September 2015. See below to move earlier.

What is the process for moving my existing Office 365 subscription?

Microsoft has put together a quick process table and guide to explain this for you.  The table from the guide is shown below.

More info: https://technet.microsoft.com/library/dn878163.aspx

What planning should be done before shifting to Australia?

I would recommend you take a look at this page on TechNet. This page has some handy tasks to do. The page also includes the link to apply for the beta program. https://technet.microsoft.com/en-nz/library/dn879433.aspx

Can I sign up early to have my Office 365 instance moved?

You can apply for an early move by visiting the beta request form and firstly signing into MS Connect and completing the form.

Remember, you must notify the Office 365 support team if you DO NOT want to move to the Australia data centre. All New Zealand instances will be moved eventually to Australia.

This is going to be of huge benefit to APAC customers, especially for Australia and New Zealand. Here in NZ, we are looking forward to this new data center.