As Sovereign Cloud Gains Momentum, Broadcom Outlines Opportunities for Cloud Service Providers in Forthcoming Report

Wednesday 6^th November: Europe is making progress towards establishing sovereign cloud services, but there is work to be done if it is to be successful. This is according to a forthcoming report between Broadcom and Johan David Michels of the Cloud Legal Project at Queen Mary University of London.

Due to be released later this year, the report, based on qualitative interviews with Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) from across Europe, looks at the state of play in the market and CSPs' appetite and readiness to embrace the sovereign cloud opportunity ahead of them.

The importance of sovereign cloud has only increased in recent years. It's a market that analysts expect to see double digit growth over the next several years, and was the central focus of an ecosystem panel at VMware Explore Barcelona 2023, and continued at the most recent EU Sovereign Cloud Day in September 2024.

As the European Union (EU) moves toward a new Commission later this year, calls for a heightened focus on EU competitiveness, resilience, investment, and strategic autonomy in information technology and AI have never been louder. Central to the EU's quest for increased digital autonomy is cloud sovereignty. This initiative aims to foster innovation and ensure data sovereignty within the EU, while supporting European businesses on their digital transformation journey.

"Sovereign" or "trusted" cloud solutions are seen as ways to better enable businesses to leverage the benefits of cloud services while ensuring compliance with European data protection regulations and independence from non-European laws.

As Hock Tan, President and CEO of Broadcom outlined in his opening keynote at VMware Explore Barcelona 2024, "VCF provides the ultimate Sovereign Cloud Solution. We give you a national cloud provider, in your country, delivering sovereign cloud services that comply with national laws."

Broadcom has the largest solutions footprint for data sovereignty with over 50 approved and value-added partners that provide a structured approach for customers to realise sovereign solutions and meet sovereignty standards. It has an established 10-point Sovereign Cloud criteria to provide cloud security, privacy, and protection of sensitive data from unauthorized access. Among the criteria featured include local residency for data; resiliency with a minimum of two data center locations within region; full jurisdictional control; full reversibility; and security certification.