cloud sovereignty

Cloud sovereignty is only as strong as the thinnest, most ambiguous stream of data that crosses a border — and for many sovereign-cloud promises that stream is metadata. The recent conversations around the AWS European Sovereign Cloud and Microsoft’s EU Data Boundary have exposed a stubborn...

Aramco’s non‑binding Memorandum of Understanding with Microsoft signals a concrete push to move industrial artificial intelligence from pilot projects into core operations, pairing Saudi Arabia’s oil‑and‑gas titan with one of the world’s largest cloud and AI platforms to pursue sovereign‑ready...

Airbus’s public shift — framed in several recent reports as a move “towards farewell to big tech” and a call for an EU sovereign cloud for data — crystallises a defining debate for Europe’s digital infrastructure: how to reconcile the scale and innovation of hyperscalers with the legal...

There is a simple but underappreciated policy direction hidden in the fevered debates over “sovereign clouds”: sovereignty is not achieved by hoarding bespoke stacks, it is achieved by making proven infrastructure commoditized and portable — in short, by turning the technologies that currently...

Microsoft’s surprise stagecraft in Bengaluru this month has rewritten the enterprise AI playbook: Satya Nadella announced that Microsoft is pairing a US$17.5 billion, multi‑year investment in India’s cloud and AI infrastructure with coordinated strategic partnerships with Cognizant, Infosys, TCS...

Microsoft’s latest push to make AI a default layer of enterprise work just got a shot of oxygen from four of India’s largest systems integrators, a move that signals both rapid industrial-scale adoption of Copilot and a major expansion of Microsoft’s partner-led strategy for agentic AI across...

Europe’s cloud sovereignty debate just moved from policy whitepapers and proof-of-concepts to legally framed, operational contingency planning designed to keep critical services running even if geopolitical pressure tries to pull the plug. Background / Overview SAP and Microsoft have announced a...

Europe’s sudden dependence on a handful of hyperscalers moved from abstract policy debate to urgent public‑policy problem this autumn, after two high‑impact outages — one at Amazon Web Services and one at Microsoft Azure — interrupted banking, transport, messaging and public services across the...

European cloud challenger Nebius this week unveiled a full‑stack “Open AI Platform” — marketed as Nebius Token Factory — positioning the company as a direct, enterprise‑focused alternative to hyperscaler AI services such as Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI and Amazon Bedrock. The platform promises...

Microsoft and Abu Dhabi’s G42 have committed to a 200-megawatt expansion of data‑center capacity in the United Arab Emirates — to be built and operated through G42’s Khazna Data Centers subsidiary — a move the partners say will come online in phases beginning before the end of 2026 and that sits...

Twice in ten days this October the internet reminded Europe — and the organisations that run its hospitals, courts and tax systems — that the word “cloud” masks a very simple and old-fashioned risk: most of our digital life sits on a handful of platforms that can fail, or be compelled to stop...

The United Arab Emirates has vaulted to the top of global rankings for workplace AI adoption after a new Microsoft analysis found that more than 1.2 billion people worldwide now use artificial intelligence — making AI the fastest‑adopted technology in human history — and that the UAE leads the...

When a single cloud region hiccupped on Monday and took dozens of popular apps and services offline for hours, the incident did more than ruin a day of gaming and language practice — it underlined a growing geopolitical and economic fault line: Western digital life increasingly flows through a...

Kuwait’s government has moved from promise to program: officials and Microsoft announced a strategic partnership to build an AI‑powered Azure Region inside Kuwait, roll Microsoft 365 Copilot out across government, and seed a local AI innovation ecosystem — a suite of commitments the government...

Microsoft’s announcement that Microsoft 365 Copilot interactions for qualified UAE organizations will be processed in‑country marks a significant inflection point for public‑sector AI adoption, pairing the firm’s generative capabilities with local data residency, reduced latency, and regulatory...

Microsoft’s announcement that Microsoft 365 Copilot interactions will be processed in‑country for qualified UAE organizations marks a significant step in the Gulf’s push to reconcile rapid AI adoption with strict data residency and regulatory expectations, and it could materially accelerate...

OpenAI and SAP have announced a high-profile partnership — branded "OpenAI for Germany" — to deliver a sovereign AI service for Germany’s public sector by combining OpenAI’s models with SAP’s Delos Cloud and Microsoft Azure infrastructure, with a planned rollout in 2026 and an initial...

India’s digital backbone is far more entangled with US‑headquartered software, cloud and platform providers than most policymakers acknowledge — and that entanglement now reads as a strategic vulnerability that must be addressed if New Delhi wants meaningful digital sovereignty by 2030...

India’s digital backbone is more dependent on US-controlled software, platforms and cloud services than most citizens realize — and that dependence now reads as a strategic vulnerability in the eyes of national security analysts and independent researchers. Background India’s public discourse...

Microsoft’s announcement of an “urgent” external investigation into allegations that Israel’s Unit 8200 used Azure to store and process recordings of millions of Palestinian phone calls crystallizes a larger, underappreciated shift: the world’s leading cloud providers are not just vendors — they...