As the race to advance digital economies gathers pace, European leaders face a dilemma: How to promote domestic cloud competition that reduces dependence on external providers, while ensuring European security and control over data. This was the central focus of many conversations last week, when over 500 of Europe’s leading voices on sovereign cloud met in Brussels to discuss Europe’s drive for competitiveness and resilience. Now in its third year, the European Sovereign Cloud Day – hosted by Broadcom – brought together regulators, researchers, industry leaders, and policymakers to discuss how Europe can uphold its position as a cloud innovation leader, while maintaining control, autonomy and confidentiality over European data that is stored, processed and accessed in other markets.
Why has cloud sovereignty become such a pressing issue? Nearly three-quarters (72%) of cloud services are provided with AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud in Europe, and up to 90% of European data resides outside EU-controlled infrastructure - therefore creating serious geopolitical and jurisdictional challenges for the EU.. Issues like European control, confidentiality and accessibility become even more critical in our digital-first world.
Here, we discuss the key themes from the European Sovereign Cloud Day, including the growing need for cloud sovereignty, the role of regulation, and the importance of sovereign cloud to the pressing issue of AI.
Entering the Zettabyte Era
Striking a careful balance between cloud innovation and data control is becoming ever trickier, with data volumes increasing exponentially as we enter the generative AI age. We’re expected to go from generating 33 zettabytes in 2018 to an estimated 572 zettabytes in 2030, thus underpinning the growing need for robust sovereign data infrastructures.
David Michels, Researcher at Queen Mary University of London, highlighted some of the core concerns around confidentiality and availability of data and why sovereign cloud holds the key to relieving some of these fears (here is the full report, or here the Executive Summary). Cloud sovereignty ensures users have control over where their data is stored and who can access it, while providing protection against vendor lock-in. It also limits the jurisdictional reach of non-EU governments over European data.
In this context, it is clear why we are seeing such strong demand for sovereign clouds in Europe. IDC has predicted that global spending on sovereign cloud solutions will reach nearly USD $258.5bn by 2027.1 There are several internal and external drivers at play here; factors like ensuring data protection and compliance with legislation, including the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) and the Data Act, as well as academic research.
One such example was shared by Christian Scholz, Vice President, Cloud Business,
for Germany-based Arvato Systems, who talked about Arvato;s rapid deployment of a sovereign infrastructure in Europe to support COVID-related public health workflows. This project highlights that sovereignty is both a vision for European leaders, and a viable solution in highly sensitive scenarios.
Scaling Europe’s Digital Infrastructure for an AI-driven Continent
The rapid acceleration of AI has underpinned the growing need for sovereign cloud infrastructures even further, with European organisations increasingly prioritising data privacy, security and control. Europe lags behind the U.S. and China when it comes to data centre capacity and computing power, two factors that are critical in the ongoing development of AI. Generative AI models require large-scale centralised computing capacity, delivered by High Performance Computing (HPC), for training and cloud-based infrastructure for deployment and inference.
Another central theme on the day was the role of digital regulation, in which the European Union has established itself as a global leader. Manuel Mateo Goyet, Head of Unit for Cloud and Software at DG CNECT, presented plans for a new Cloud and AI Development Act, which has been designed to support Europe’s growing digital infrastructure.
Sovereign AI: The Next Frontier
Sovereign AI is fast becoming the next major frontier in digital autonomy. As with cloud services, similar concerns are emerging around control, legal jurisdiction, and transparency – particularly around how AI models are trained and what data they use. There is growing recognition across Europe that AI systems must not only comply with existing data protection laws but also reflect the core values of the continent, such as privacy, accountability, and human oversight. This has created an urgent need for AI solutions developed within European legal and ethical frameworks, ensuring that European data is not only protected, but also used responsibly and in the public interest.
For organisations looking to capitalise on the capabilities of AI without sacrificing sovereignty requirements, VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) can help. Large Language Models (LLMs) can be set up securely in a private cloud and ready-made AI apps can be deployed to help them take advantage of AI while retaining full jurisdictional control of their data.
Looking Ahead
What’s clear is that cloud sovereignty remains core to Europe’s digital future and central to conversations among policymakers, regulators and industry leaders, as together, they strive to build a more trusted, interoperable and resilient digital economy. There was common agreement that there will be no single solution, but instead a selection of cloud models with varying degrees of sovereignty dependent on the sector and type of data being stored, managed and accessed.
Missed the event and want to hear more? Don’t worry – click here to watch on-demand recordings of all the day’s sessions, including:
- Navigating the Sovereign Cloud Lessons from Arvato and Kubus with Christian Scholz
- How Sovereignty Shapes the Future of Public Services with Chris Folkerd from ANS
- The Strategic Impact of Sovereign AI, with Roger Samdal from Sopra Steria
- A Customer Conversation with Katharina Cordes from Pluscloud and Emmanuel Finance from Cancom
- Panel - Sovereign Cloud in Europe Balancing Innovation, Security and Fair Competition
1IDC,Worldwide Sovereign Cloud Market Forecast, 2022–2027 (IDC #US49695922)