Data Sovereignty and Clouds: Not an Oxymoron. Anymore

What was once contrarian to what the Cloud stood for is now being accommodated by top vendors and crafted in a special way. Are Sovereign Clouds flipping the script?

- Pratima H

It’s always reassuring to keep your precious jewels safe – like in a bank locker. But what if that bank moves right in your street? So that you can watch it from your window, anytime. As unusual as it may have sounded just a few years back, the cloud industry has begun to realise that some regions and verticals need tight control over ‘where’ their data is kept. From compliance needs to localisation mandates to sovereignty imperatives, Cloud has been adapting well to this big customer need.

Almost every big Cloud vendor – from AWS to Oracle to Salesforce has now embraced sovereignty in some form. In an Accenture report in 2023, it was observed how with digital sovereignty laws on the rise, sovereign cloud solutions have emerged to help organizations take back control of their data. Interestingly, European enterprises were seen increasingly embracing sovereign cloud, with 37 per cent already invested and 44 per cent that were planning to invest in the next two years. As many as 50 per cent of European CXOs saw data sovereignty as a top issue when selecting cloud vendors. The Accenture survey also found that increasing numbers of European enterprises are prioritizing cloud sovereignty over the near term, and 89 per cent even said that the Russia-Ukraine war has strengthened their focus on sovereign cloud. Of those companies who had made or were considering sovereign cloud investments, 37 per cent had spotted to have already invested and about 20 per cent of workloads were already being moved to sovereign cloud. Over a third of surveyed companies also saw the potential for eventually moving between 25 per cent and 75 per cent of data, workloads or assets.