Control your data and infrastructure with a sovereign cloud
In a world of growing compliance challenges and international-level security risks, a sovereign cloud helps organisations, governments and their institutions safeguard their data, access and infrastructure.
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What is a sovereign cloud?
Sovereign clouds allow nations or organisations to maintain control over every part of their infrastructure, including data, processing, storage, and access.
A sovereign cloud goes beyond simply cloud architecture and data processing. Truly sovereign clouds meet a comprehensive set of legal, operational, regulatory, and technical requirements that give the cloud owner full autonomy. They mitigate reliance on cloud providers outside of their country or region.
Learn more about sovereign clouds ›
The three requirements for sovereign cloud operations
1. Data
Your data governance practices obey your country's rules for collection, storage, processing, sharing, and disposal.
2. Operations
Your organisation controls your operations and has full control and oversight of their use and management.
3. Technology
Your hardware and software are designed to ensure 100% control and reliability of your data and services.
Why build a sovereign cloud?
Governments and their institutions want to take back control of their infrastructure to mitigate cybersecurity risks and their reliance on external vendors.
At the organisation level, new regulations and trade shifts are changing the viability of traditional cloud services.
Data sovereignty and security
Sensitive data, including military information and citizen records, is at high risk of foreign interference or cyber threats. Governments want physical control over their code and data centres to ensure robust, safe operations.
Geopolitical events
Sanctions, wars, infrastructure damage – there are many circumstances outside of your control that could bring your cloud operations to a halt. Sovereign clouds help you avoid this risky dependence.
Compliance and regulations
Many countries have adopted data protection laws that mandate storing and processing confidential data within national boundaries. In some cases, cloud providers have to abide by other laws.
Economic factors
Building in-country cloud infrastructure and using local providers directly supports the local economy. This creates jobs, stimulates local technological innovation, and reduces dependence on global service providers.
Need for control over the entire cloud
Sovereign clouds allow control and greater transparency of personnel, staffing, and organisational access.
Digital autonomy
Relying on global public cloud providers can create dependencies on foreign companies, potentially compromising digital autonomy. Sovereign clouds empower governments to take control of their digital future.
Resilience and disaster recovery
Sovereign clouds can be optimised for redundancy and disaster recovery, ensuring that critical government services remain operational even when natural disasters or cyberattacks occur.
Industries that need sovereign clouds
Public sector
Sensitive, personal and potentially secret state information requires shielding to ensure the integrity of government services and protect national security.
Legal firms
Legal firms need to ensure that their highly confidential and privileged information is completely controlled. Entire cases could depend on it.
Health care
Medical organisations are tasked with safeguarding individuals' most sensitive medical and personal information. They also need to safeguard their operations and life-saving equipment against disruptions.
Financial
Financial organisations have regulatory and legal requirements to keep highly sensitive information safe. Attackers would love to access their data troves – or even their bank accounts.
Highly regulated industries
The medical and financial industries are just two of the many heavily regulated industries that have a vital interest in controlling their infrastructure and guarding their information.
Why build your sovereign cloud with open source
Fewer licences, easier management
Open source tools require fewer licences - giving you easy management and lower costs.
Design and migration freedom
Design your cloud according to your business requirements. Freely use your choice of software, compute, storage and networking configurations.
Full transparency and control of source code
Know exactly how your code works and who accesses your clouds.
The best of both worlds with a hybrid environment
Use both public and private cloud resources according to your needs.
Reduce your reliance on proprietary vendors
Use open source components and decide where you run and move your cloud workloads. Gain architecture freedom and flexibility.
How to migrate from proprietary solutions like VMware to open source ›
Build your sovereign cloud with Canonical
The Canonical infrastructure stack uses well-established open source technologies. Tie them together for a unified, end-to-end sovereign cloud solution.
The reference platform for performant, cost-effective and agile data centre operations.
What customers say
"Where other infrastructure providers in Switzerland that use traditional technologies might charge customers a premium uplift per year, we can offer the same capabilities for ten times less while still achieving a better margin."
Thomas Taroni
VP of Product, Phoenix Systems
"We needed a cloud solution that was stable, reliable and performant. Canonical allowed us to do this by helping to design and deploy our cloud - and they helped us do this quickly."
Peter Blain
Director of Product and AI, Firmus
"Knowledge transfer was another reason we chose to partner with Canonical. To minimise long-term operating costs, we don't want to be reliant on any third party. Canonical is giving our staff the training they need to be able to manage the cloud completely self-sufficiently."
Jahanzeb Arshad
VP of Operations, Nayatel
"We wanted to consolidate onto a single, open platform. That way, we wouldn't be tied to a single vendor, and we'd be able to change parameters at will. The goal was to develop our skills so that we could work with any partner in one cloud environment."
Macdonald Chamba
Head of Infrastructure and Cloud Services, Telekom Networks Malawi
Canonical offers cloud design and delivery at a fixed price. Talk to sales ›
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