Cloud sovereignty isn’t only a buzzword anymore. It’s an actual concern for companies internationally. 

Kunal Kushwaha, Area CTO, Civo advised Dataquest that newest Civo analysis within the UK discovered that 84 % of IT leaders are nervous about geopolitical dangers to their knowledge. Much more attention-grabbing, 68 % need full possession of their knowledge on the subject of AI.

This isn’t only a UK factor, he defined. “In Europe, we’re seeing a transparent pushback towards the dominance of huge cloud suppliers by tasks like EuroStack. Over in India, the momentum is powerful too. New knowledge safety legal guidelines and the RBI’s plan to launch its personal sovereign cloud present how severe the nation is about taking management of its knowledge.”

It’s price noting right here that the RBI’s announcement is a giant deal. “Their upcoming sovereign cloud, set for 2025, will supply reasonably priced cloud companies to monetary establishments and ensure all knowledge stays throughout the nation. On prime of that, India’s Digital Private Knowledge Safety Act from 2023 has strict guidelines about the place knowledge can go. The draft guidelines launched in early 2025 give the federal government much more energy over cross-border knowledge motion.” Kushwaha reasoned.

Many current examples present that even when intention is there, the enterprise mannequin and geopolitical pressures can’t guarantee actual sovereignty. In June 2025, Microsoft France advised the French Senate that they couldn’t assure French citizen knowledge wouldn’t be despatched to the US, even with out the French authorities agreeing to it. “Legal guidelines just like the US CLOUD Act and FISA 702 permit the US authorities to demand knowledge from any US-based firm, regardless of the place the information is stored. Which means a US hyperscaler would want to provide entry to any knowledge saved on their servers in India. So storing your knowledge regionally doesn’t defend you in case your supplier nonetheless solutions to international legal guidelines.” Kushwaha cautions.

Addressing the large query on ‘sovereignty washing’, he defined why individuals are calling out massive cloud suppliers like Microsoft, AWS, and Google. “They speak rather a lot about digital sovereignty, however they’re nonetheless US corporations. US legal guidelines nonetheless apply. Actual knowledge sovereignty means full authorized and operational management. It’s not nearly storing knowledge in a sure location. You want jurisdictional separation and customer-controlled encryption keys. With out that, the sovereignty claims don’t imply a lot.”

Cloud selections aren’t nearly tech specs or pricing anymore, he identified. “Positive, value, efficiency, and safety nonetheless matter, however now geopolitics is true there within the combine too. Companies have to consider all of it collectively. That’s simply the truth now. With Trump’s new tariffs, shifting rules, and all of the authorized dangers tied to international jurisdictions, cloud has turn out to be far more than only a funds or tech resolution. It’s now a enterprise danger resolution too.”

Notably, and understandably then, the worldwide sovereign cloud market was round 96 billion {dollars} in 2024. By 2033, it is anticipated to hit almost 649 billion.

(To learn the entire interview, take a look at the September problem of Dataquest).