Going all-in on digital sovereignty

(Image credit: Future)

Digital sovereignty has quietly become one of the most urgent requirements in the tech sector. Once a matter for policy debate, this is now a critical business issue and as much a matter of resilience as one of compliance.

Indeed while we’ve spoken about the need for digital sovereignty before, recent geopolitical developments have cast the debate in far starker light. With European governments and businesses leaning heavily into digital sovereignty, it’s clear there’s an emerging race to secure critical workloads.

Just how important will digital sovereignty be in 2026?

In this episode, Jane and Rory discuss all things digital sovereignty – how it’s being realized, the scale of the transformation, and how we could see things play out.

Highlights

"Gartner has projected that worldwide, sovereign cloud is spending. So that's infrastructure is set to surge to 80 billion in 2026 which is a 35.6% increase from 2025 and in 2027 Gartner thinks that spending is going to reach $110 billion so it's a lot of money. It's a lot of money, and especially as it's growing."

"These facilities that we're talking about, they take time and money, they are an investment. This is a buying of a house versus a buying of a phone. The way that Gartner is talking about projecting this growth is quite remarkable, really. [It's] less like houses, more like airports, something where there is a deep investment at an infrastructure and time level versus just going out and buying a consumer good or something you might refresh every five years."

"If I were a European policymaker, politician, I would be nervous about how much is sitting with American companies potentially, when they could just be hauled over the calls under the CLOUD Act or whatever. And I do appreciate that these companies, you know, it's in their business interest to try and reassure their European customers and they're clearly making steps in that direction. But as you say, it's untested. So you can see why digital sovereignty is such an important consideration, both at the national level and at a business level as well."

Footnotes

TOPICS

Rory Bathgate is Features and Multimedia Editor at ITPro, overseeing all in-depth content and case studies. He can also be found co-hosting the ITPro Podcast with Jane McCallion, swapping a keyboard for a microphone to discuss the latest learnings with thought leaders from across the tech sector.

In his free time, Rory enjoys photography, video editing, and good science fiction. After graduating from the University of Kent with a BA in English and American Literature, Rory undertook an MA in Eighteenth-Century Studies at King’s College London. He joined ITPro in 2022 as a graduate, following four years in student journalism. You can contact Rory at rory.bathgate@futurenet.com or on LinkedIn.

Highlights

Footnotes

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