Microsoft has invested $3 billion in its European cloud operation

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella announced on Monday that Microsoft has invested more than $3 billion (£2.3 billion) in its European cloud offering, with $1 billion (£777 million) of that invested in the last year alone.

The tech executive told an audience at Dublin City University that Microsoft's Azure platform will be expanded to France in 2017 with several new data centres set to come online.

"Microsoft has more regions than any other cloud provider in Europe," said Nadella, adding that Microsoft's Azure platform is now delivered out of data centres in Ireland, the Netherlands, the UK, and Germany.

"We've invested over $3 billion (£2.3 billion) to deliver a global scale cloud across Europe," he continued. "The capacity of Microsoft's cloud has more than doubled over past year."

Nadella also announced that Microsoft has published a new book called "A Cloud for Global Good." The book contains 78 policy recommendations that are designed to help make cloud technologies more trusted, responsible, and inclusive.

Speaking on the same stage as Nadella, Microsoft president Brad Smith said: "We believe we're at the dawn of a new industrial revolution. It's worth pausing and reflecting on what that means."

Other US tech giants like Google, Amazon, Apple, and Facebook are also building data centres in Europe in a bid to improve the customer experience in Europe and satisfy the data regulation demands set by local governments.