Digital Sovereignty: Controlling Infrastructure, Data, and Risk in the Modern Enterprise

Digital infrastructure today is deeply integrated into public services, enterprise operations, and national security. As organizations increasingly rely on cloud platforms, SaaS ecosystems, and data analytics tools—often hosted and operated outside their jurisdiction—the issue of digital sovereignty has moved from an abstract policy topic to a concrete operational concern.

In Germany and France, this shift has prompted a series of initiatives focused on reducing dependency on non-European technology providers, increasing transparency and control, and aligning infrastructure with national and EU legal requirements. From sovereign cloud projects like the Digitale Verwaltungscloud (DVC) and Numérique Souverain, to the promotion of open-source technologies and national cloud certifications, these countries are shaping how both public and private sectors approach sovereignty in practical terms.

This article looks at the rationale behind digital sovereignty, how it is being implemented, and what trade-offs organizations can expect in terms of cost, effort, and complexity.

Why Digital Sovereignty Is Necessary

The core driver behind digital sovereignty is risk management—not nationalism or market isolation. Most enterprises and government entities rely on infrastructure and services controlled by US-based large-scale data centers and cloud service providers, referred to as “hyperscalers,” including Amazon Web Service (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP). While these platforms provide scale, redundancy, and innovation, they are governed by laws such as the US CLOUD Act, which enables US authorities to compel access to data held by American companies, regardless of where that data resides physically.

This legal reach was demonstrated in May 2024, when Microsoft complied with a US federal order to provide information related to the International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor—despite the ICC being a Dutch-based international organization and not subject to US jurisdiction. The incident raised serious concerns in Europe about how US companies can be forced to hand over data stored on non-US soil, especially when such actions may conflict with international law or undermine the neutrality of global institutions. For European governments and enterprises, this case was a clear signal: hosting data within the EU is not sufficient if the infrastructure operator remains subject to foreign legal frameworks.

This extraterritorial legal exposure directly conflicts with EU data protection standards, including GDPR. It introduces significant ambiguity into compliance frameworks, especially in sectors like healthcare, defense, finance, and public administration, where control over data access and processing is not optional.

From a technical operations perspective, lack of sovereignty means reduced control over service availability, limited visibility into platform-level telemetry, and higher barriers to auditing or certifying environments. For enterprises, it also introduces lock-in risks. Once core systems and workflows are tightly coupled with proprietary APIs or architectures, switching platforms becomes difficult and costly.

Sovereignty, in this context, is about gaining control over IT stack components, ensuring that infrastructure is governed by local laws, and reducing the dependency surface that exposes organizations to external regulatory, geopolitical, or commercial risks.

How Germany Is Pursuing Sovereignty

Germany has approached digital sovereignty through a combination of architectural, policy, and ecosystem-level changes. One of the central initiatives is the Digitale Verwaltungscloud (DVC), a sovereign cloud platform designed specifically for German federal and state agencies. Unlike commercial public cloud platforms, the DVC is designed to be operated under full German jurisdiction, with data localization, hardened governance structures, and restricted administrative access—features that align with both regulatory and security requirements.

In parallel, Germany has invested in open-source adoption and development. The rationale is straightforward: open-source code can be audited, forked, maintained, and adapted without being subject to licensing restrictions or vendor-defined roadmaps. From a security engineering standpoint, this means fewer black-box dependencies and more opportunities for in-house or community-led hardening. The German government has also supported the Sovereign Tech Fund, aimed at improving the sustainability and security of open-source components used across government and critical infrastructure.

Germany is also a major participant in GAIA-X, a European initiative to build a federated data infrastructure. GAIA-X doesn’t aim to replicate AWS or Azure but instead defines standards and interoperability frameworks that allow European cloud providers to integrate services while maintaining data sovereignty and portability. The project is about creating a level of abstraction over cloud services where identity, access control, data lineage, and auditability are enforceable at a policy level.

How France Is Advancing Sovereignty

France is pursuing digital sovereignty with similar intensity, emphasizing strategic autonomy over data, cloud services, and digital infrastructure. The French government has defined a national doctrine for "Cloud de Confiance" (Trusted Cloud), which sets strict compliance, security, and operational criteria for cloud providers servicing the French public sector and critical industries.

At the center of France’s strategy is Numérique Souverain, a broad program that coordinates government action around sovereign infrastructure, digital independence, and domestic innovation.

Under this banner, France has backed cloud offerings that meet SecNumCloud certification, a framework defined by the Agence Nationale de Sécurité des Systèmes d'Information (ANSSI), that certifies cloud providers on physical infrastructure location, operational transparency, encryption control, and resistance to foreign legal intrusion.

French tech companies such as OVHcloud, 3DS Outscale, and Scaleway are developing sovereign cloud services aligned with these certifications. Furthermore, France has also formed partnerships to create “SaaS de Confiance” services—sovereign, compliant alternatives to Google Workspace and Microsoft 365—either through in-country development or EU-based integrations.

France is an equal stakeholder in GAIA-X, contributing to its governance, reference architecture, and pilot programs. Through these efforts, France aims to secure a technological base that is aligned with European legal norms and national strategic autonomy, particularly in sectors like defense, health, education, and finance.

Together with Germany, France is working to create a European digital ecosystem where supply chains, data governance, and security standards are locally anchored, even if solutions continue to interoperate globally.

Other Initiatives

Another example of Europe's technical sovereignty efforts is DNS4EU, a European Union-backed project aiming to create a secure, privacy-respecting, and resilient DNS resolver infrastructure across the continent. DNS4EU is intended to reduce reliance on foreign-operated DNS services like Google DNS or Cloudflare, which can introduce legal and operational risks.

By ensuring DNS queries are resolved within the EU under EU jurisdiction, the initiative strengthens data privacy guarantees and enables better filtering against cyber threats such as phishing or malware. Germany and France are both key contributors to this project, reflecting their shared view that core internet infrastructure—like DNS—must align with European legal standards and security models.

What It Costs & What It Requires

Achieving digital sovereignty involves trade-offs across several dimensions: cost, complexity, time-to-value, and vendor availability. Sovereign cloud solutions typically come with higher upfront and operational costs. They may lack the hyperscaler advantages of auto-scaling, global redundancy, and turnkey services. Organizations must invest in internal expertise to manage open-source stacks, integrate multiple service providers, and maintain compliance without outsourcing those functions.

From a deployment perspective, sovereign platforms may require more custom integration and configuration effort, particularly when migrating from existing SaaS or cloud-native environments. Open-source solutions, while flexible, require skilled personnel for patch management, feature development, and dependency resolution—areas often abstracted away in commercial platforms.

There’s also a cultural and process component. Moving toward digital sovereignty often means changing how IT procurement, security operations, and compliance are approached. Procurement teams must understand software licensing models beyond traditional enterprise agreements. Security teams must adapt to continuous code auditing and upstream contribution responsibilities. Compliance teams need to align with evolving standards like the European Cybersecurity Certification Scheme for Cloud Services (EUCS).

But the key point is that sovereignty is not just a cost, it is a risk control mechanism. The long-term return on investment is improved compliance posture, lower exposure to geopolitical disruption, reduced vendor lock-in, and increased resilience. For critical infrastructure providers, public institutions, and highly regulated enterprises, these outcomes are not optional—they’re baseline requirements.

Germany’s and France’s approaches highlight this logic clearly. Rather than waiting for global providers to adapt their platforms to local needs, both governments are building or mandating platforms where compliance, auditability, and jurisdictional control are built in, not retrofitted. For example, cloud providers participating in France’s SecNumCloud program must ensure customer-held encryption keys, operate within French jurisdiction, and undergo ANSSI certification.

Strategic Control Over the Digital Stack

Digital sovereignty is not about isolating from the global digital economy; it is about ensuring that critical parts of the digital stack can be operated independently, inspected fully, and governed locally. The Franco-German model doesn’t require abandoning public cloud altogether—it segments workloads. Less sensitive functions can remain in conventional cloud environments, while sovereignty-sensitive data and applications run in controlled, auditable infrastructures.

From a technical leadership standpoint, the message is clear: sovereignty must be built in by design, not bolted on.

IT decision-makers need to ask the following:

• Where is our data stored, and under what jurisdiction?
• Who controls the root of trust in our infrastructure?
• Can we audit the software that processes sensitive data?
• Are we locked into vendors that don’t support portability or compliance alignment?

If the answers to these questions introduce risk or uncertainty, a sovereignty strategy is not a luxury, it is a roadmap to long-term operational security.

Conclusion: Sovereignty As an Architectural Principle

Germany and France’s commitment to digital sovereignty reflects a pragmatic response to a changing threat and compliance landscape. Through projects like DVC, GAIA-X, SecNumCloud, and strategic investment in trusted infrastructure, the two countries are working to ensure that public and private sector infrastructure can operate securely, legally, and reliably—even when external conditions are unstable.

Enterprises should draw lessons from this approach. Whether driven by compliance mandates, board-level risk assessments, or cybersecurity frameworks, digital sovereignty is becoming an architectural principle—one that defines how infrastructure is designed, how data is handled, and how vendors are chosen.

The technical lift is real. The cultural shift is significant. But the payoff is long-term resilience, higher assurance, and the ability to operate on your own terms. In today’s interconnected but volatile digital environment, that level of control is not just strategic—it’s essential.