We are, right now, living in our ‘digital decade’, according to President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen. It will be a defining 10 years for our digital world, bringing in radical changes to how we work, learn and live. 

This has resulted in the exponential growth of data volume created and also its distribution, as it gets shared across devices, households, organisations, governments and borders. It’s reached a point where there’s now a pressing need for digital sovereignty and capability across nations; the acknowledgement that there should be a regional, if not national, mandate to improve data security, privacy and innovation.

And this raises big questions; what are the challenges for businesses – and indeed all of us – if this doesn’t happen? What innovations are leading the response? And, crucially, how can this become a reality before potential threats outweigh opportunity?

With the help of some leading voices navigating our digital future, this piece will aim to address these key questions and considerations.

Defining digital sovereignty

Firstly, what exactly do we mean by ‘digital sovereignty’? Boil it down and this is about people, businesses and government maintaining control over their data. If you’re a citizen, you’ll have read the headlines and felt worried about the data that is yours or about you and whether this has the right controls in place to prevent it being accessed and misused by unknown actors. The same goes for enterprises. This general concern across people and businesses has reached a level where action is really beginning to happen.

What’s changed is that, 20 years ago, things were simple. Data sat on our computers, in a single location. Now, in a true multinational, multicloud world, the data that organisations handle is spread all over the globe, bringing complications to where it is, who owns it and who can access and change it.

And while ‘cloud’ isn’t the whole conversation (more on that later), it is a vital part of it. As Sylvain Rouri, Chief Sales Officer at cloud provider OVHcloud, says: “More companies, more software and more applications are relying on the cloud. It’s how we now produce services to citizens, customers and users, and it needs to be fully transparent and agnostic to such an extent that we have complete control of our data.”

Rouri compares the cloud shift we’re seeing to the food we consume: gone are the post World War Two days of quantity over quality, of ensuring an abundance of food; now we want to know what’s on our plate, how it’s been sourced and the quality of it. We really care about what we eat – and it’s the same for the clouds we use. We’re demanding high quality services that we truly understand and can consume on our own terms.

This, by the way, is exactly why we’ve just announced the new VMware Sovereign Cloud initiative; unveiled to give governments freedom and control in a multicloud world, enabling them to engage with trusted national cloud service providers that meet geo-specific requirements around data sovereignty and jurisdictional control.

Where does responsibility lie?

Who is this conversation relevant to, who actually wants and needs sovereignty over their data? Well, it’s everybody.

Take governments around the world. They, understandably, want their citizen data to stay within their national boundaries – something that’s become a focus following the rush towards global hyperscalers (which tend to be based in America). Now, they’re asking whether all of the data they are building is sitting within another nation’s control – a genuine issue of national security.

It’s the same scenario for organisations. Most businesses want to be global but it’s a delicate balancing act, juggling operations – including the interchange and storage of data – across different countries and entities.

That’s especially true when you start to look at the nuances of specific market sectors. Take the challenges banks are facing as an example. Regulators are carefully looking at concentration risk – saying ‘don’t put all of your eggs into one cloud basket, spread the risk across clouds… but also make sure you can get out of these clouds at any given moment, oh, and make sure you always know where your data is and have control of it’. These are deeply technical challenges that are not solved overnight. And it’s an indicator of why there are over 4 500 cloud providers, collectively satisfying the need for choice in a multicloud world.

Pauline Flament, Chief Technology Officer at world-renowned manufacturer Michelin, expands on this through the lens of what it’s like in her own company. As a leader in sustainable mobility, Michelin sells tires and services in 180 countries – a complex, global ecosystem. Michelin cannot know every circumstance throughout its operations, so it relies on its service providers to offer the right framework and security to ensure that data can always be located, protected and accessed. This is vital for the whole business – from R&D (who need digital and data sovereignty to safeguard innovation) right through to HR (who need to safeguard employee data in every geography).

What’s the risk of getting this wrong? For Flament it’s threefold: firstly, lack of opportunity. If a business cannot do business in certain countries, it cannot grow effectively. Secondly, productivity. If data isn’t properly accessible in a country, operations won’t work. Thirdly, this is about company-wide reputation. Business is built on trust, and if your data isn’t safe then neither is your reputation. These are the risks – undeniably significant – but flip them around, and you can immediately see the scale of opportunity that getting digital and data sovereignty right presents.

Action talks louder than words

So what is being done in response to all of this? What efforts are leading the way in shaping our digital decade?

Enter Gaia-X, a project built on representatives from business, politics and science from Europe and around the globe working together, hand in hand, to create a federated and secure data infrastructure. Gaia-X is working towards a vision of an open, transparent and secure digital ecosystem, where data and services can be made available, collated and shared in an environment of trust.

According to Francesco Bonfiglio, CEO, Gaia-X Association, AISBL it is about “taking back control of digital technologies”, of delivering a system that allows for the governance of existing technologies, particularly cloud stacks, that nowadays don’t have the transparency or interoperability required. It is fully inclusive; anybody can be Gaia-X compliant, so long as they open their services and technology to be inspected, verified and made transparent.”

Bonfiglio is clear: Gaia-X is initiated by Europe for Europe and beyond. He has seen enthusiastic members from around the world, not least from countries like Korea and Japan, where businesses are hungry for consistent levels of proven trust. “This is not a European problem,” Bonfiglio says. “We are talking about the future of the worldwide economy, which is going to be driven mainly by data. If you don’t have control, this will simply constitute a move of the economy’s value to one of less control.

"So people, for the first time, are sitting around the table and saying this is what we want to do with our data; this is what the market wants and this is how we’ll respond together. It’s inclusive and we have money to spend – the perfect equation for change.”

Trust as the foundation to build on

Part of this equation has to be trust. People have had trust issues going into the cloud before and have, in fact, had their trust broken. The action being taken now is a sign of maturity in the cloud market – which has evolved to the point where many different providers are delivering nuanced, mature versions of the technology that offers users choice, reliability and value.

At the same time, we also need to think bigger. The future of data isn’t just in clouds; it’s highly distributed, at the edge. New standards and ways of talking about data need to consider where data exists, holistically, that’s throughout the entire design chain and architecture.

Bonfiglio agrees. “We are not just talking about the cloud anymore. We are talking about a federation mechanism of nodes, people, providers users sharing data – seamlessly, across the globe – in a secure and trusted way. We are building the fabric of a new future of digital platform computing, in a similar way to how we built the internet – one that will provide the foundational future of our lives and economy.”

The opportunity couldn’t be bigger. We are working through this ‘digital decade’ with purpose, but the work we do now – rooted in collaboration, trust and transparency – will be significant far beyond 2030. It’s an incredibly exciting time to take back control.

ITWeb Cloud & Data Centre Summit

24 February

The Maslow Hotel in Sandton

Keynote address: Sovereign Cloud: Unlocking the data economy

Sumeeth Singh, head: cloud provider business Sub-Saharan Africa, VMware

Click here to view the agenda and find out more.