Sovereign Clouds and the Digital Sovereignty Imperative: Europe's Quest for Digital Independence

This IDC Market Perspective discusses digital sovereignty, which is becoming an important topic in Europe given legislation and judicial rulings that have come into force in recent years. While data sovereignty is now well established in Europe following the introduction of GDPR in 2018, IDC expects digital sovereignty to gain greater traction over the next few years and beyond, with sovereign clouds playing a key role. Data and cloud sovereignty are subsets of digital sovereignty, which expands the debate beyond data to entire architectures, processes, and operations. "Digital sovereignty is being driven by states and organizations that want to control their digital destinies and their data, particularly in light of recent EU rulings and legislation," said Rahiel Nasir, associate research director, European Cloud. "There are benefits to be had here. Adopting digital sovereignty principles can help enterprise organizations enhance operational resilience, make them more trustworthy, and place them in a stronger position to meet current and upcoming regulations, not just in the EU but also globally, thus opening up new markets."