Azure Local and Landing Zones: How to Build Hybrid Cloud the Right Way with Christoffer Klarskov Jakobsen [MVP]

What happens when your cloud strategy cannot live entirely in the public cloud? Organizations are modernizing infrastructure with Azure, platform services, Infrastructure as Code, automated deployment pipelines, and Azure Landing Zones. At the same time, some workloads still need to remain close to factories, offices, regulated environments, existing infrastructure, or latency-sensitive systems. In this episode of M365 FM, Mirko Peters talks with Microsoft MVP Christoffer Klarskov Jakobsen about how Azure Local can become part of a broader Azure architecture rather than another isolated on-premises platform. They explore Azure Local, Azure Landing Zones, Azure Arc, governance, Infrastructure as Code, Bicep, Azure DevOps, modernization, and the realities of building hybrid cloud environments.

WHAT IS AZURE LOCAL?
Azure Local combines familiar infrastructure technologies with Azure-based management, governance, and security capabilities. At its core, organizations can run workloads such as virtual machines locally while connecting the environment back to Azure. Christoffer explains that the major difference compared with a traditional Windows Server environment is the Azure experience surrounding the infrastructure. Organizations can keep workloads and data locally while using Azure capabilities to manage and govern the environment.

IS AZURE LOCAL JUST AZURE IN YOUR DATA CENTER?
Not exactly. Azure provides a significantly larger catalog of cloud services, but Azure Local can bring selected Azure experiences closer to local infrastructure. Christoffer discusses running virtual machines and Kubernetes on Azure Local as well as scenarios involving SQL Managed Instance and Azure Virtual Desktop. The result isn't a complete copy of Azure running inside your building. It's a hybrid platform combining local compute requirements with selected Azure services and management capabilities.

WHEN DOES AZURE LOCAL MAKE SENSE?
Several scenarios stand out. Organizations may have regulatory requirements requiring data to remain locally. Others need extremely low latency between applications, machines, factories, or other infrastructure. Some organizations simply have workloads that cannot yet move completely into the public cloud. Christoffer also sees increasing potential around local AI workloads, including scenarios where organizations need AI capabilities while maintaining local control over their data.

AZURE LOCAL IS A LOCAL CLOUD
One of the important architectural lessons from the conversation is that Azure Local shouldn't be treated as simply another pair of servers. The environment includes multiple infrastructure and Azure-connected layers. Organizations therefore need people who understand the underlying hardware and operating technologies as well as Azure management. Christoffer describes Azure Local as effectively operating a local cloud rather than simply installing another traditional virtualization cluster.

WHY AZURE LANDING ZONES MATTER
Moving workloads into Azure doesn't automatically create a well-designed cloud environment. Organizations need structure, security boundaries, governance, permissions, networking, logging, and clear separation between workloads. Azure Landing Zones provide an architectural approach for establishing those foundations. Instead of placing unrelated applications, development environments, production systems, networking components, and shared services inside the same subscription, organizations establish clearer boundaries around workloads and responsibilities.

THINK DIFFERENTLY ABOUT AZURE SUBSCRIPTIONS
A subscription shouldn't simply become a container for everything an organization deploys. Christoffer recommends thinking about subscriptions as boundaries for specific environments and workloads. A development environment can have its own subscription. Testing can have another. Production can have...