Geopatriation and sovereign cloud: how data returns to the source

Technology decisions aren’t immune to the macroeconomic context in which the companies making them must operate. So politics, emerging threats, and regulations will shape the agenda of IT directors this year.

And among the trends that Gartner has identified as shaping the technology agenda throughout 2026 is geopatriation, defined as the relocation of workloads from a cloud hosting environment — typically a hyperscale public cloud — that’s perceived to pose heightened geopolitical risks, to an alternative storage environment that offers greater sovereignty.

Storage migrates to sovereign clouds or even on-prem data centers in an attempt to mitigate risks and potential problems. But given so many uncertainties, it’s arguable data is being repatriated.

Gartner concludes this is not only based on its general market observations, but also by directly gauging the concerns of company executives. During the first half of 2025, it recorded a 305% increase in requests for information on how to mitigate the potential exposure of using global suppliers, and that by 2030, 75% of European and Middle Eastern companies will have geopatriated their virtual cargo, compared to 5% in 2025.

The golden age of the sovereign cloud

Ultimately, this trend is another facet of the sovereign cloud boom. The growth of cloud sovereignty has been exponential over the past year, says Alfons Buxó, global engineering leader at Deloitte. The push for it, he says, is to seek greater digital autonomy and protect community interests, while developing a critical industry.

The key to understanding a sovereign cloud, adds Google Cloud Spain’s national technology director Héctor Sánchez Montenegro, is that it’s not a one-size-fits-all concept. “Depending on the location, sector, or regulatory context, sovereignty has a different meaning for each customer,” he says. Google already offers sovereign clouds, whose guarantee of sovereignty isn’t based on a single product, but on a strategy that separates the technology from the operations. “We understand that sovereignty isn’t binary, but rather a spectrum of needs we guarantee through three levels of isolation and control,” he adds.

Buxó also says sovereignty is a continuous spectrum, not a digital function. In the case of the EU, he says, concepts such as applicable regulations, operational autonomy, asset ownership, and technology stacks are considered, so every company and situation require a unique approach. “Organizations will have to reassess their digital strategies in order to understand and decide on the best option for each case. We’ll continue with private, public, and sovereign clouds,” Buxó says.

The challenges of the context

One of the certainties of this sovereign cloud boom is it’s closely connected to the context in which organizations, companies, and other cloud end users operate.

While digital sovereignty was less prevalent at the beginning of the century, it’s now become ubiquitous, especially as political decisions in various countries have solidified technology as a key geostrategic asset.

“Data sovereignty is a fundamental part of digital sovereignty, to the point that in practice, it’s becoming a requirement for employment contracts,” says María Loza Correa, professor of the master’s program in cybersecurity at the International University of La Rioja in Spain. “Current geopolitical instability, coupled with dependence on digital infrastructures belonging to certain hyperscalers worldwide and the European legal framework, has led to an emphasis on the pursuit of digital sovereignty, as it’s a necessary condition for political and economic sovereignty.”

Recent European regulatory developments are already moving in this direction, as is the case with the European Cybersecurity Strategy, which addresses resilience and technological sovereignty. Europe wants to break from external dependence, where information can pass through its own infrastructure.

But it’s not just a question of who owns the infrastructure or the solutions. It’s also what happens when the landscape becomes volatile and uncertain due to, for example, pandemics, war, and geopolitical tensions. In the wake of instability, nobody wants their tech to become collateral damage.

“In the current context, the EU, Canada, and other countries have become aware of their digital dependencies on third parties,” Buxó adds. “Sovereign cloud computing is a consequence of this realization and impacts not only critical sectors like defense and national security, but it’s also becoming a relevant issue for other heavily regulated sectors like banking, pharmaceuticals, and healthcare.”

With the technological landscape becoming more unsure and complex, the goal is to know and mitigate risks where possible, and create additional options. “We’re at a crucial moment,” Loza Correa points out. “Data is a key business asset that must be protected.”

Added to this is the AI boom, which is driving more companies and public bodies to the cloud. “As organizations accelerate their digital transformation to harness the economic potential of AI, they specifically need robust digital sovereignty controls,” says Sánchez Montenegro. With greater sovereignty and control over what happens to information, the doors of AI open even to the most sensitive sectors using highly protected information.

The move to a sovereign cloud isn’t a defensive retreat, but a strategic modernization, he adds, driven more by resilience than regulatory pressure or concerns about the impact of geopolitics on IT infrastructure.

A break in the cloud

Gartner’s analysis of increasing geopatriation warns that many organizations are realizing that local alternatives can be unappealing and disruptive. Local cloud providers, however, see this scenario as a potential windfall. For global hyperscalers, though, the market trend is driving them to accelerate sovereignty options to reassure customers and avoid losing market share.

If three out of four European companies repatriate their data workloads, however, will it become necessary to have on-prem infrastructure? Gartner says that most sovereign cloud spending will come primarily from new digital solutions or legacy workloads expected to be migrated to a cloud environment, says Rene Buest, the consulting firm’s senior director analyst. “Local cloud providers will benefit from this,” he says.

The question, therefore, is how the cloud market will be reorganized seeing that hyperscalers have already developed sovereign clouds of different types and approaches. “We’ve moved to a phase of control over data, which involves geographical considerations and applicable regulations, rather than scalability and efficiency,” says Loza Correa.

Europe has already launched frameworks such as the Cloud Sovereignty Framework and announced future investments in gigafactories and other infrastructure. So this is a marathon that requires ambitious commitment. “To fully realize the economic value of AI, Europe needs to triple its data center capacity in the next five to seven years, a task that’ll require an estimated investment of €400 billion in digital infrastructure,” says Sánchez Montenegro.