What Is Advanced Data Residency?

• Advanced Data Residency ensures that most Microsoft 365 data resides in the correct region.
• ADR does not replace Microsoft 365 Multi-Geo, and the two can be complementary.
• ADR is available for a limited but growing number of regions outside the United States.

Advanced Data Residency (ADR) is an add-on to Microsoft 365 suites that helps customers meet data residency requirements by moving and managing the regional location of an entire Microsoft 365 tenancy. ADR must be licensed on a per-user basis for all users in a tenancy, for an unclear length of time. It is complementary to Multi-Geo and most organizations will find that they require a mixture of both to cover all their data residency scenarios, eventually leading many compliance-savvy organizations to license ADR for their entire organization.

Comparing Multi-Geo and ADR

Initially, Microsoft 365 Multi-Geo and ADR may appear unrelated, or even in conflict with each other. However, the two actually are complementary; many organizations will likely use ADR to “reposition” supported Microsoft 365 data to their specified region, and then use Multi-Geo to pin as much user data as is supported to the best region for the data to reside in.