Microsoft is currently busy beefing up its cloud computing presence in the UK region, adding exciting new features and services to the company's cloud computing business, Microsoft Azure. The software giant this week announced a new cloud backup service for its UK customers.

Microsoft Azure Get Serious About UK Cloud Business

According to Inquirer.net, the new cloud computing service, which called Azure Backup, will ensure customers can use an off-site backup without the risk of their data being sent outside of the country.

The news comes after Microsoft has opened several data centers in the UK region. The UK-based facilities house both Azure cloud services and the company's Office 365 software suite.

The Redmond-based software company said that compared to other cloud providers, Azure Backup customers would only pay for the amount they actually use, with the option to increase and decrease the size when needed.

Microsoft also added that all data would be encrypted during transmission and storage. With this news, Microsoft customers can be confident that their data will be secure and available whenever they need it.

Additionally, the company will also offer a Site Recovery service to allow on-premises physical servers to be replicated in the Azure cloud for backup and recovery purposes. With the new Site Recovery service, Azure customers will now be able to choose between locally redundant storage and geo-redundant storage.

Microsoft claims that high-profile customers are already getting into the company's UK Azure services. These include the luxury carmaker Aston Martin, the Ministry of Defence (MoD), the Met Police and parts of the NHS, and more.

In addition to the UK Azure rollout, Microsoft is also planning to introduce the Azure cloud services, Office 365 and Dynamics 365 services in France.

Cloud Battle Intensifies As Price War Escalates

Cloud computing wars might be intensified these days as Microsoft finally launched its latest salvo in the hotly contested computing space. According to CBR Online, Microsoft Azure has made some aggressive price reductions on several Azure Virtual Machine families and storage types. The primary goal is to lower the barrier for customer entry and boost cloud transformation.

Prices have now reduced on its Compute optimized instances, F series, which currently down by 18 percent on Windows VM and 23 percent for Linux VM. The massive reduction campaign comes just a few months after Microsoft raised prices on some of its software and cloud services on the UK market.

Cloud rivals AWS and Google Cloud Platform have intensified their own pricing strategy, which involved lowering prices for some of their cloud services.