Data Residency Options
Region-specific.
Overview
Data residency is the discipline of keeping customer data in specific geographic regions. GDPR, regional sovereignty laws, and customer procurement preferences all push the same direction: customers choose a region, data stays there, the architecture proves it. Five elements carry the work: region-specific storage, compute locality, backup locality, audit evidence, public-region availability.
- Region-specific storage. Customer data lives in the region the customer chose. Storage location matches policy.
- Compute locality. Processing happens in the region. Cross-region data flow disappears from the architecture.
- Backup locality. Backups stay in the region of origin. Residency holds end-to-end across DR scenarios.
- Audit evidence plus public-region availability. Region selection logged with timestamps for audit; US, EU, APAC offered at minimum to match market reach.
The approach
Region as a tenant property, per-region infrastructure for every tier, cross-region traffic architecturally prohibited, contractual residency commitment in the DPA, audit-quality evidence of every flow. The discipline is producing real residency rather than marketing residency.
- Region as tenant property. Each tenant has a chosen region recorded at creation. Avoids cross-tenant region confusion.
- Per-region infrastructure. Compute, storage, backup all regional. Real residency, not a deployment of a global system.
- Cross-region traffic prohibited architecturally. Customer data cannot leave the region by code path. Enforced, not just intended.
- Contractual commitment plus audit evidence. DPA and customer contract specify residency; region selection, data flow, and storage location all auditable.
Why this compounds
Each region opened reaches a new customer segment that could not adopt before. Regulated buyers (EU public sector, healthcare, finance) require residency at procurement. Region-aware design forces discipline across the rest of the architecture, which raises the quality bar elsewhere too.
- Market reach. Regulated customers can adopt. Markets open up.
- Compliance evidence. Auditors and regulators see real architecture. Certifications proceed faster.
- Customer trust. Predictable residency builds the loyalty unpredictable residency burns.
- Year-one investment, year-two habit. First region is investment-heavy; subsequent regions inherit the patterns.