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(Company corrects number, paragraph 7)
By Eric Auchard
LONDON, Sept 7 (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp isintroducing a complete set of cloud services from data centresin Britain, its second biggest market for cloud-based softwareafter the United States, as demand for data localisation spreadsacross Europe and around the world.
The new offering will allow a range of British customersfrom the legal, banking, public and utility sectors to runoperations over the Internet, something they had been reluctantto do for regulatory and data security reasons.
"We want to make sure that as many customers as possiblehave access to the cloud," said Nicola Hodson, general managerof marketing and operations for Microsoft UK.
Local storage of data has grown more desirable as U.S.technology companies have become dominant and after former U.S.National Security Administration contractor Edward Snowdendisclosed mass government surveillance, stoking public concernover data privacy, security and national sovereignty.
More recently, Britain's vote to leave the European Unionhas raised questions about the status of data stored andprocessed in the UK.
Previously, Microsoft customers using cloud software reliedon European data centres based in Dublin, Amsterdam or otherlocations. It operates more than 100 data centres globally.
The UK Ministry of Defence, which has around 250,000 usersand spends more than $3 billion per year on technicalinfrastructure, will be an early customer of Microsoft's cloudoffice apps and infrastructure, citing cost savings and datasecurity, the company said.
Other initial UK cloud customers include automaker AstonMartin, and South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust, thecountry's largest mental health agency, and Capita Plc,Britain's largest business process outsourcing, which serves amix of clients in central and local government and the privatesector.
Microsoft is the world's No. 2 cloud software supplier afterAmazon.com, which pioneered cloud services a decadeago. Both companies also compete with Google, IBM, Oracle and many others.
The UK-based cloud will host Office 365, a suite of cloudapplications that replaces Microsoft's classic Office software,and Azure, its cloud-based software infrastructure platform.Microsoft plans to add its Dynamics CRM Online suite of cloudsales and marketing applications in the first half of 2017.
Forrester Research estimates global spending on public cloudplatforms, business services and applications will reach $236billion by 2020, a compound annual growth rate of 22 percentbetween 2015 and the end of the decade.
Microsoft already counts thousands of UK cloud customersranging from retailer Marks and Spencer Group Plc toVirgin Atlantic airlines. Customers have the option of hostingdata locally or elsewhere on the Microsoft network. (Editing by David Gregorio)
