PALO ALTO, Calif. – VMworld 2021 (Oct. 5, 2021) – VMware's strategy is to give customers freedom and control in an increasingly multi-cloud environment, delivering a trusted foundation to accelerate their digital innovation. At VMworld 2021, the new VMware Sovereign Cloud initiative was unveiled to help customers engage with trusted national cloud service providers to meet these requirements. The full news is available here.
Read commentary below from partners who have received the VMware Sovereign Cloud designation.
AUCloud
“AUCloud provides sovereign Australian protection for Australian government and critical national industry data. Not just customer data but account data, metadata, monitoring data and analytic data – namely the kind of data that global operators transmit offshore to their overseas support centres or corporate analytics farms. AUCloud’s deep capability exceeds Australian government best practice for data classified up to PROTECTED and is built upon certified VMware services assured and operated by Australian security cleared citizens within an ASX publicly listed company (“SOV’) owned by Australians.”
– Phil Dawson, chief executive officer, Sovereign Cloud Australia
Datacom
“Government, Public sector and key industries across New Zealand & Australia (Health, Finance etc.) are very conscious of the need to maintain data sovereignty, using cloud solutions to reduce risk from data breaches, improve control and deliver high performance availability. Our GovCloud is specifically designed to deliver the data sovereignty and controls needed for government agencies to utilize cloud effectively and more securely without impacting sovereignty requirements.”
– Darren Hopper, general manager, Datacom
OVHcloud
“Sovereignty is not protectionism, lock-in systems, or closed systems, but the freedom to choose! We are proud to be part of VMware Cloud Verified Partners supporting the Zero Carbon Committed Initiative and now the VMware Sovereign Cloud initiative. Our VMware solutions, fully automated, reach the highest level of certifications at local and regional scale, such as C5 in Germany, SecNumCloud in France, Italy’s AGID, G-Cloud in the UK, and fully complies with specific sectoral regulations.”
– Michel Paulin, chief executive officer, OVHcloud
Telefonica
“Telefonica recognizes the importance of sovereignty and as being headquartered in an EU member state we are actively involved participating in various EU initiatives to ensure our solutions are as ready as they can be to deliver on the digital economy of the future. Working with public sector and government organisations, Telefonica delivers cloud solutions that manage and maintain data sovereignty with a cloud fabric and secure networking, ensuring multiple aspects of sovereign requirements and principles are maintained.”
– Daniel Ribaya, cloud product marketing director, Telefonica Tech
Telmex
"For both the Government and the Private Regulated sectors, data privacy, security and sovereignty are paramount, but the adoption of cloud strategies has been a pain point due to hyperscale clouds being subject to foreign influence. The Tier V, locally hosted, Telmex Public Cloud provides the security, accountability, governance, and visibility controls to ensure national compliance with data sovereignty, from the application to the metadata of all workloads."
– Radwan Gonzalez, public cloud product manager, Telmex
ThinkOn
“Data and Operational Supply Chain sovereignty is a concern for all Canadians and top of mind for both the Canadian Federal Government as well as the broader public sector. As the only Canadian cloud service provider certified by the Government of Canada, ThinkOn’s VMware powered services provide a digital marketplace of enterprise-ready cloud infrastructure and data management solutions that enable complete sovereignty and privacy for Canadian data. GCloud.ca by ThinkOn enables the Government of Canada and public sector organizations across the country to easily and more securely source and deploy cloud-based data solutions and business applications approved for government workloads on a VMware hypervisor. We selected VMware as our hyper-visor partner specifically because of its compatibility with over 90% of the public sector workload in Canada today.”
– Craig McLellan, chief executive officer, ThinkOn, Inc.
TietoEVRY
"New regulations such as Gaia-X, CLOUD Act, and Schrems-II are hitting all organizations at a rapid speed on the global and local scale. We at TietoEVRY experience the increasing demand for national clouds to secure the needs and regulatory requirements of Nordic organisations. To be nominated as the first VMware Sovereign Cloud provider in the Nordics is a proud moment for us."
– Alberto Valero, head of private cloud & edge services, TietoEVRY
UKcloud
“For certain applications and data, security and data privacy dictates the need for national jurisdiction and data classification control to be important. UKCloud’s sovereign cloud gives those customers the assurance that their critical data is kept out of the reach of foreign control and influence, which cannot be achieved by the hyperscale public cloud providers who are under USA jurisdiction. This is driving a growth as more UK technology companies are now able to innovate securely and within their region on a sovereign cloud provider like us.”