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Datadog has announced it is to launch a UK datacentre presence.
Its existing datacentre offerings sit across all three major providers, AWS, Google and Microsoft. What is not yet clear is which platform it will use. As a UK-based datacentre, this will also reduce latency and improve performance for its UK customers. For those building out AI architectures, latency and performance are critical.
Yanbing Li, Chief Product Officer at Datadog, said, “As more organisations modernise and run critical systems in the cloud and deploy AI, where operational data is stored has become a practical constraint, not just a compliance question.
“This launch reflects our continued investment in building regional infrastructure to meet that reality. For the public sector and highly regulated industries such as financial services and healthcare, storing data locally is critical. The UK data centre presence gives customers a way to adopt modern observability and security without compromising in-region data storage.”
Cloud growth needs more datacentre capabilities
The growth in the use of cloud services and data storage continues to grow, especially across regulated industries. Where they would once fund their own facilities, keeping up with new technology and managing CAPEX, has created an appetite for cloud.
Datadog cites a survey by LSEG that shows 82% of financial services firms now operate in multi-cloud or hybrid environments. Additionally, 60% of the £26 billion spent by the UK public sector goes towards cloud infrastructure.
But that use of the cloud brings a need to evaluate risk. Key to that risk assessment is data governance, which includes data sovereignty and privacy. Last year, the UK introduced the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025. It was not designed to replace the UK GDPR, but it does allow greater use of data. It also increased attention on how operational data is stored and processed.
One of the challenges of a wider use of data was the need to retain data adequacy status with the EU GDPR. To address that, the bill provided new guidance on how the UK would regulate data flows, including data transfers outside the UK. It also means that UK companies are now operating under dual compliance. For many, that means they have to think about data sovereignty and where data is stored.
How does this impact data sovereignty?
Nobody expected that just before the UK bill was passed, Microsoft would make an admission to the French Senate over its services and data sovereignty. The French Senate was holding hearings to discuss the impact of public-sector technology procurement on data sovereignty. Microsoft already had a deal where it managed French healthcare data with the guarantee that the data would not leave the UK.
When asked if Microsoft could guarantee data would stay in the EU, Anton Carniaux, the Director of Public and Legal Affairs at Microsoft France, replied, “No, I cannot guarantee.” He went on to point out that as a US company, Microsoft has to comply with the US CLOUD Act. That means the US government can make secret requests for data from Microsoft about any data it holds, in any facility around the world.
How did Datadog respond to questions on guarantees?
It led the EU to tighten rules around data sovereignty, and that is something that Datadog is addressing. Enterprise Times asked the company, “What legally binding written guarantees are Datadog providing customers that data will not, under any circumstances, leave the UK?”
It responded, “Datadog provides regional data residency aligned to the selected hosting location, and that regional configuration is reflected in our customer agreements. For customers with specific sovereign cloud requirements, we work closely with them to assess their regulatory and operational needs.”
It’s a fair enough response as much will depend on individual customers. What is important is that it does mean organisations are able to have that conversation to assess risk. With the company already operating in Germany, it will have already had to address this issue.
We also asked about certification of the datacentre in terms of ISO and other standards. The response was, “Certification scope updates will be reflected in our formal compliance reports once our UK region reaches general availability.”
Again, that is information that will be essential to that risk discussion.
Enterprise Times: What does this mean?
Opening any datacentre today is a costly experience. The time it takes to build a facility is often longer than the speed at which technology, especially AI, evolves. For Datadog, this is about creating a secure environment for data and observability of its usage.
The latter is important. Companies are looking for ways to understand data privacy and security. That can only happen if they have the right tools for observability across the entire data infrastructure. Importantly, that also means being able to observe how AI is using data.
The EU is leading the race to provide guardrails around AI usage. For those companies that need EU GDPR adequacy, Datadog is also providing tools to monitor what AI does with data.
The company will also be deploying its entire product portfolio into this new UK datacentre presence. That means its software security and service management tools will also be available to customers.
Additionally, this also gives UK-based firms an alternative to the big three cloud infrastructure players. The only other questions are, when will it open? And will the company immediately offer failover and other services between Germany and the UK?
The post Datadog to launch new UK Datacentre appeared first on Enterprise Times.
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