Sovereignty and data - what support can the channel provide?

Sovereignty is one of those big conceptual ideas that sounds important but is hard to link to real-world issues if you are not in the world of politics. That came to an abrupt end when the US Government issued an order making Anthropic’s new Fable AI service subject to an Export Order, blocking non-US citizens from accessing Fable. In response, Anthropic had to stop offering Fable completely while the situation was resolved.

This encapsulates the challenge around sovereignty. It covers how companies can operate, what countries they can work in, and what individuals can or can’t expect around their lives. From a technology perspective, it covers areas like data, security, and privacy.

Sovereignty was already a hot topic for conversation before that Export Order came through. For example, UK cloud company Civo has found that interest in sovereign technology has gone up, with 73 percent of UK IT leaders stating that data sovereignty is a strategic priority for them, up 12 percent over the previous year’s result. Similarly, 66 percent said they would consider switching cloud providers to regain control, but only 15 percent have carried out a successful migration.

So what should channel partners actually do around this area? How much are customers asking for help, and what options exist?

The role for the channel around sovereignty and open source

The first element here is to split sovereignty into its component parts: what rules the organization has to follow around their business processes, and what infrastructure they can use to carry out those processes. From a straight technology perspective, sovereignty can affect what tools or services can be used to achieve a goal, as well as what other steps the organization has to take for security or privacy.

Any technology decision can lead to lock-in, where the customer is tied to that vendor and either cannot get their data out of that platform or where the cost to move is prohibitive. When that service can then be taken down for reasons outside the organization’s control, that is a specific business risk.

The only approach that can avoid lock-in at a technical level is to use open source software alternatives. By choosing software that is available for anyone to use, for any purposes, companies can avoid lock-in. There is also the side benefit that open source software is potentially available for free, reducing the license cost side.

Customers face a challenge in how they will run their software, where those options sit from a sovereignty point of view, and what the long-term approach will be. For partners, this is also a build versus buy problem. Should you hire staff with open source software skills? Where are the biggest potential revenue opportunities, and how predictable are those kinds of projects? Lastly, where can you partner to deliver projects, and where can you turn when there are more specific deep technology problems?

The traditional approach around commercial open source has been to work with a vendor that might provide a supported open source product or their own managed cloud service. However, this can run the risk of leading to the same sovereignty challenges as the big hyperscalers, in that they may be companies based in a different location or use US-based cloud services to deliver. Using ‘vanilla’ open source projects is the option with the least risk, but it also requires the most potential support where companies don’t have those skills in-house. For partners, offering that consulting advice on how to use open source effectively is a route to revenue where sovereignty is concerned.

No open source project is the same

The other challenge for partners is that there are different levels of projects, and they may need different levels of expertise. For widely used open source software like Linux, there are a lot of people with the right skills in place. For other projects involving more specific technologies like databases, some projects will be simple. Using a common open source database like PostgreSQL or MySQL may be enough. For bigger implementations, enterprise-class features may be needed. Open source software can provide sovereignty and control, but it also has to deliver around those business requirements too.

This is where more specific knowledge and skills may be needed. For partners, accessing that specialist knowledge may be difficult - retaining full-time staff may not be appropriate, as there may not be that consistency in demand to provide a reliable and profitable revenue stream. Joining forces around projects can fill the gaps that do exist, while still providing control for the customer around their sovereignty and securing that long-term relationship for the partner.

Sovereignty will continue to be a pain point for companies that are concerned about how they stay in control over their IT infrastructure. At the same time, they have to carry on delivering against business goals.

For channel organizations, matching those business and sovereignty goals requires knowledge, skills, and good relationships that can be called on when expertise is needed. Using open source software is one of the fastest ways to deliver IT systems that meet sovereignty goals, but it can also ensure that companies can continue to operate effectively.