IBM Sovereign Core targets AI and cloud data residency gains for European enterprises

IBM has launched a new cloud platform designed to help organizations build, deploy, and manage AI-ready sovereign environments.

Unlike other sovereign solutions, IBM said its Sovereign Core makes sovereignty an inherent property of the software itself.

Rather than relying on policy overlays or provider-managed control planes, it uses always-on controls and user-owned control planes.

Similarly, ongoing compliance capabilities are embedded directly into the software, helping organizations to produce regulator-ready proof on demand and without manual, audit-driven processes.

This, the firm said, allows organizations to maintain direct operational authority over software operations, deployment decisions, and system configurations, with no need to involve out-of-region vendors.

All authentication, authorization, encryption keys, and access management remain within jurisdiction boundaries under customer control.

IBM Sovereign Core will be available in tech preview next month, with full general availability planned for the middle of this year.

What to expect with IBM Sovereign Core

According to IBM, Sovereign Core generates, stores and manages comprehensive operational data, system telemetry, and audit trails within the sovereign boundary, including automated identity.

Elsewhere, AI model deployment and hosting, local GPU clusters, local inference execution and agent operations also take place under local governance, without the need to export data to external providers.

"The sovereign AI conversation has focused on data residency, but that's only part of the equation," said Sanjeev Mohan, principal, SanjMo.

"IBM Sovereign Core addresses the harder question: who controls the system and can you prove it to regulators? IBM takes a holistic approach spanning data, operations, technology, and assurance, with continuous monitoring," the company said in a statement.

"As AI moves into production, that kind of ongoing accountability becomes non-negotiable."

Customers can choose to deploy IBM Sovereign Core in the environment of their choice – whether that's an on-premises data center, supported in-region cloud infrastructure, or through IT service providers.

Approved providers under the scheme include Computacenter in Germany, or Cegeka, which operates in Belgium and the Netherlands.

Sovereignty in the spotlight

The move from IBM is the latest in a mass market pivot toward data sovereignty, with a host of major cloud providers now offering these services.

This week, for example, AWS announced the general availability of its dedicated European Sovereign Cloud service, aimed at allowing European customers to keep data in-region.

Enterprise concerns about data sovereignty have been creeping in across the European Union (EU) in recent years, spurred on by new legislation.

Gartner predicts that by 2028, 65% of governments worldwide will introduce some technological sovereignty requirements to improve national infrastructural independence and protect from extraterritorial regulatory interference.

Additional research from the consultancy shows more than three-quarters of all enterprises will have a digital sovereignty strategy by 2030, often based on sovereign cloud.

Long-term, this will be a booming market, according to Gartner. By 2028, the sovereign cloud market is projected to grow by 4.5 times, reaching $169 billion globally.

"Businesses are facing growing pressure to innovate while meeting tightening regulatory requirements and recognizing the importance of controlling how sensitive data and AI workloads are accessed and operated," said Priya Srinivasan, general manager for IBM software products.

"This shift is creating an urgent need for sovereign solutions that deliver AI-ready environments."

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