Like every other budding cloud merchant Microsoft had this idea about having data centers scattered around the country and letting users pick the geography where they wanted their apps to run.

Currently it offers US-Northwest, US-Southwest and US-Anywhere, with others still to come online.

However, it's going to be disabling its Northwest option in the next few weeks and barring new applications.

Existing apps won't be affected for the moment but because of what it calls "changes in the local tax laws" in its home state of Washington, it's going to migrate all applications and storage accounts elsewhere prior to Azure's commercial launch in November.

It will provide an automated tool ahead of the forced migration and if users don't pick up and move their apps and data will be deleted, Microsoft says.

See here.