Understanding Government Clouds

In order to satisfy the requirements of government entities, contractors, and suppliers, Microsoft offers a variety of “government clouds.” There are instances of government clouds for Microsoft 365, Azure, and Dynamics 365, which, confusingly, have slightly different taxonomies and naming schemes.

Ultimately, how these clouds are implemented and deployed depends on which instance of Azure Active Directory (AAD) they depend upon.

Microsoft 365 Enterprise (the commercial version), Azure Commercial, and Dynamics 365 utilize a globally distributed instance of AAD; this instance is also used by the Government Community Cloud (GCC). For commercial customers, data is typically kept in local data center regions. The primary difference between Enterprise and GCC is that in the latter case, servers and data are guaranteed to reside within the continental United States, certain compliance regimes are followed (such as FedRAMP), and only screened Microsoft personnel can access GCC resources: satisfying certain requirements for state, local, tribal, and federal entities in the United States.