It is a strategic vulnerability that many organizations in Europe currently share: a daily dependence on the services of American cloud service providers (CSPs) such as Microsoft, Amazon, and Google. The unprecedented concentration of critical IT infrastructure in the hands of just a few foreign parties creates dependencies and risks that can no longer be ignored. In light of the geopolitical shifts of recent months and the growing focus on digital sovereignty, it is irresponsible to turn a blind eye to the potential consequences. Concerns about our digital sovereignty, the continuity of cloud services, and the safeguarding of privacy have further escalated. Across Europe, this focus on digital sovereignty continues to grow specially within the Financial industry with country-specific data residency requirements.
At the same time, attention to digital autonomy is also growing within Europe. Initiatives such as GAIA-X and the European Alliance for Industrial Data, Edge and Cloud aim to develop a sovereign and transparent European cloud ecosystem. This movement underscores that cloud sovereignty is not only a national but also a European strategic priority. Organizations would be wise to align their transition strategies with these developments and, where possible, connect with European CSPs or initiatives that safeguard interoperability and data control.
Whether all this means that governments will soon fully step away from American CSPs is hard to imagine. In many cases, there are simply no good alternatives—that is precisely the problem. Still, it is positive that organizations—both in the public and private sectors—are now considering the potential consequences of a “cloud transition” and how they can prepare for it. The Dutch central government acknowledges in its Cloud Policy the importance of having a transition strategy.
In this whitepaper, we outline which steps organizations can already take to prepare themselves for a potential cloud transition.
