European Push for Digital Sovereignty in Cloud Infrastructure
European governments and organizations are intensifying efforts to achieve digital sovereignty in cloud infrastructure, driven by geopolitical uncertainties and concerns over reliance on American hyperscalers such as Microsoft, Google, and Amazon Web Services. With U.S. policy shifts and potential transatlantic tensions, European leaders are prioritizing the development of domestic alternatives and strategies to ensure control over sensitive data and critical workloads. Despite these ambitions, local cloud providers currently hold only a small share of the market, and experts suggest that a new European hyperscaler is unlikely to emerge soon, with existing players like SAP and Deutsche Telekom each controlling only about 2% of the market.
In response to these sovereignty concerns, cloud providers are expanding offerings tailored to regulatory and data residency requirements. Amazon Web Services, for example, has introduced Dedicated Local Zones to provide customers with greater control over data location, security, and compliance, supporting sensitive workloads for public sector and regulated industries. These initiatives reflect a broader trend of cloud service adaptation to meet the evolving needs of European customers seeking to balance operational flexibility with strict sovereignty and compliance mandates.
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