European companies and organizations are today deeply dependent on American cloud platforms such as Azure, AWS and GCP. For a long time, it was perceived as a straightforward choice: high level of innovation, fast scalability and a mature service portfolio. However, geopolitical developments in recent years have changed the conditions. 

Since 2018, the American CLOUD Act, which means that US cloud providers can be forced to hand over data to US authorities, regardless of where the data is stored. This could conflict with GDPR and the EU's view on individual privacy.

At the same time, US foreign policy priorities have shifted. This means that European businesses can no longer assume that American interests always coincide with European ones. For organizations that handle sensitive data, such as personal data, this is a strategic risk, not a technical detail.

Many US cloud providers now offer European data centers and promise that customer data will be stored within the EU. It’s a step in the right direction – but not a guarantee.

• Data residency is about where data is stored.
• Data sovereignty is about who has the right to access it.

The CLOUD Act means that US companies must be able to disclose data even if it is located in Frankfurt, Dublin or Stockholm. It is therefore important not to confuse geographical storage with legal protection.

The real challenge: lock-in and addictions

The American cloud services offer a very mature ecosystem of services and tools. This makes them attractive – but also difficult to leave. Many organizations find that migrating away from these platforms is:

• costly
• time-consuming
• organizationally difficult to justify

This creates a lock-in effect which means that businesses risk losing control over both costs and freedom of action.

Three risks everyone should take seriouslyr

1. Data protection risk
The most obvious. Sensitive data may be subject to US jurisdiction even if stored in the EU. For some businesses, this is an unacceptable risk for two reasons: regulatory compliance, such as GDPR, and protection of business-critical information, intangible assets, or other data that may be attractive from an intelligence or security perspective.

2. The risk of lock-in
The more the business relies on proprietary services, the more difficult it becomes to react to changing circumstances, including geopolitics, supplier business models, and regulatory requirements.

3. Cost risk
Cloud services can provide significant efficiency gains, but they also create financial dependencies. The more difficult it is to move a service, the less flexibility an organization has if prices, terms, or business needs change.

The strategic choice

Staying in US cloud services may be the right decision. Leaving them may also be the right decision. But it must not be a casual decision. Organizations that handle sensitive data need to conduct a structured risk assessment and weigh:

• Legal risks
• Business-critical dependencies
• Cost development
• Technical flexibility

The options are also not limited to American hyperscalers or on-prem solutions. European cloud providers has matured significantly in recent years and now offers everything from virtual servers to container platforms and managed services. For many organizations, they can therefore be a reasonable alternative.

At the same time, increased control often means greater responsibility. Functions such as identity management, logging, monitoring, backup, and high availability must be built and managed by the business to a greater extent. Infrastructure deployment and automation can also be more time-consuming because tool support, integrations, and IaC modules are often less mature outside the major US cloud provider ecosystems.

Conclusions – what everyone can do today

• Do a risk assessment
  The decision to use US cloud services must be based on legal, business and security considerations.
• Build for portability
  Build systems modularly and avoid tight coupling to proprietary services. Use open standards where possible and abstract critical components such as databases, identity services and integration layers. This increases freedom of action in the long run.
• Automate operations and maintenance
  Automation reduces costs, increases robustness and makes it easier to move systems when needed.

  These three steps are not controversial and there are established tools and processes to manage them. Digital sovereignty is not just about where systems run today, but about how easily organizations can adapt to a constantly changing environment.