- 11 minutes ago
Europe faces an uncomfortable truth: American tech giants operate 70% of its cloud infrastructure, the invisible backbone of the digital economy. This deep reliance on non-European platforms is provoking critical discussions on sovereignty, security, and competitiveness, especially as artificial intelligence, stricter data regulations, and geopolitical shifts continue to redefine the global technology environment. Is European digital sovereignty a realistic strategic ambition? What would it actually take to shift the balance of cloud power?
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00:22good morning everybody so we are going to talk about
00:29sovereignty and strategic autonomy and in particular in Europe because we are
00:34in Paris in Europe so I'm Jeremy Adet I'm the partner from EY France a member
00:41of the executive committee in charge of the clients in industry and this is a
00:45subject and topic that we are talking a lot with our clients so very very happy
00:50to be with these three panelists very interesting panelist so I would start
00:56maybe with you Solange so you have chief legal officer of OVH cloud exactly chief
01:02legal officer of OVH cloud OVH cloud it is the biggest purely European cloud
01:07provider we have with a turnover about 1 billion to 200 thousands of
01:16heroes we have 46 data centers all around the world and we are present on the
01:22public cloud private cloud more on the IaaS and in past levels of the cloud and
01:30very happy to be there thank you very much so we have Christian so of course you
01:36come from a very very important technology company because coming from
01:43Europe I think we're still the largest one yeah so I'm from SAP thanks for being
01:48here thanks for having me I'm part of was on the screen the sovereign cloud
01:52practice within SAP so the sovereign cloud business I'm leading the strategy
01:56there and as you can imagine the last few years in that business and building
01:59that business within SAP across the globe also as a global business has been very
02:05interesting to say the least yeah and finally Sebastian so you represent I would
02:10say the clients yeah yes we represent 45,000 technology SMEs in the continent so
02:19throughout let's say the 27 member states plus neighboring countries these are on one
02:25hand the clients of course definitely but on the other hand they are also the
02:30companies who build innovate and build alternative solutions to let's say the
02:36US hyperscalers ecosystems so we are very proud to have that type of membership
02:42because our members are actually the strength of Europe we believe great thank you
02:48very much so I will make a brief brief introduction about sovereignty because when
02:55we are talking about sovereignty you know everybody can put different things in it so
02:59I would put a definition maybe you can contest it but let's start from it so
03:05I would say that the sovereignty is the ability of a state a national state or an
03:11enterprise to shape how technology including AI is built on deployed across the value
03:19chain let's put it like that so you can shape you can decide etc etc the second thing is
03:26that it has to be grounded in intent and aligned to strategic priorities of your company core values
03:34security trust and reliance and I would talk maybe a little bit about EY how EY is looking at
03:44sovereignty because we think that sovereignty required an integrated view across a lot of dimensions so some
03:55vertical dimensions so the governance talent how you use your capital for
04:02sovereignty the supply chain and of course the cyber security topics and also a kind of
04:08horizontal dimension talking about the application the data the infrastructure and of course the energy okay so let's put it
04:17like that over of course you know I am coming to Viva Tech from the very beginning and I would
04:24say that five years ago
04:25we would never have a round table around sovereignty okay now it is a topic that everybody is talking about
04:33we have a lot of events more recently about anthropic you know shutting down his latest LLM for external countries
04:47outside of the US and we know that because we measure that so 51% say that sovereign
04:55of private AI is a private AI is extremely important to their strategy 47% are planning investment where it
05:03is a strategic priority and it's scaling very very fast in terms of market because we today consider that the
05:12sovereign market is AI market is 40 billion in 2025 and we projected that it could become 148 billion dollars
05:22in 2032 so it kinds of
05:24more than 25% more than 25% CAGR right so maybe my first question is what change what change
05:33in this 18 months I would say that we are now doing a round table around sovereignty at Viva Tech
05:40what your clients are saying to you?
05:44Before replying to this question I just would like to react on the definition of sovereignty I'm sure you was
05:51expecting for it
05:53I think that the definition you gave is a little bit limited currently sovereignty is a multi-dimension concept
06:02it's something bring around freedom of choice indeed when we talk about freedom of choice is as well the ability
06:12to manage a lot of risk very tangible risk is not abstract and it's important to tell this because digital
06:19sovereignty is not defined currently so what we see is that depending on the stakeholders the definition can be very
06:28very different but
06:29let's stick to what digital sovereignty aims to do it aims to provide freedom of choice is based on three
06:41pillars for us data sovereignty who can access and control your data operational sovereignty who can operate your infrastructure and
06:54technological
06:54technological sovereignty it's very close to what you told about who controls all the technical stack you have so after
07:04having this broader definition what changed in the last 18 months is very more easy very easier to understand
07:15what happens is that we have big geopolitical changes in the last 18 months with a lot of discussions about
07:25autonomy why because now what we say that the geopolitical context is less predictable than it used to be in
07:35the last years
07:36and we had a lot of changes and we had a lot of change signs small big ones about changing
07:45the about those changes among those signs we have a judge in the international court of justice who started to
07:54be treated like a terrorist with a cut of all the access due to export control restrictions
08:00we had this switch down of anthropic as well we had this switch down of anthropic as well we have
08:05the u.s. tariffs that were not exactly about sovereignty but it's another signal of geopolitical changes and what we
08:15see is that tech trade regulation export control all these are used as tools
08:26political tools not only against the bad guys but including against european citizens organizations countries and this real change led
08:42the organizations to understand that tech dependencies is no longer a tech matter indeed it's a strategic matter
08:53okay okay you put it very well that's clear maybe maybe christian because you bear the title sovereign into your
09:00your title at sap so what changed from from your point of view and and from a company like sap
09:08who probably consider themselves a global company now do you do you yeah yeah um all of that um which
09:17i think leads so let's in the end uh to the realization
09:21when i look at the realization when i look at our customers the tens of thousands of customers that we
09:24have across the globe of that there's no turning back right i think five years ago everybody hoped that this
09:31is a phase we would go through this as a continent as well and afterwards everything will be somewhat back
09:37to normal i think with all of those events with more events that we can talk about the realization is
09:42here that this is not going to be the case there's no back to normal this is the new normal
09:46and we have to find answers so i think that realization also set with our customers
09:51that's what we see in conversations uh that customers are now becoming increasingly um motivated to really now go down
10:00deep into finding out how their definition of sovereignty or their interpretation of against what which risks do i want
10:08to protect myself my company the business processes i'm running i don't know right even if you go into the
10:13public service the the well-being of the citizens so what is the scenario that i'm looking at right now
10:18how do i need to transform my business processes into being protected uh against events that might happen in the
10:25future it might be even worse and more disruptive than the things that we've seen right now
10:29so people start start thinking about that i think there's still a long way to go for us as a
10:35continent uh to think this through to find the right
10:39level of and you said choice i also fully agree with that the right level of choice when it comes
10:43to technology to have the tools available
10:46for our industry be it in the smaller market segment be it also that's what we strive in the large
10:51enterprise segment
10:52um to still get the latest and greatest innovation but with the right level of control
10:57thank you christian yeah and sebastian so you represent the clients so what do the clients that you represent today
11:07uh want in terms of sovereignty is it something new for them and what do they want now
11:16yes well i think first of all what really has changed and what we now want
11:24is that we have the collective realization that technology is not a commodity we have been living
11:32for the last maybe two decades in this uh fictional reality where we were told you just use it take
11:43whatever is cheaper take apparently cheaper uh take whatever is available or where is it is at scale
11:50uh it doesn't matter you need to have access to these tools and you need to by the way adopt
11:55them
11:55as soon as possible because if you wait too long others are going to be more productive than you wow
12:01that's the reality which we've been told in the last 20 years and now
12:07uh many people in the sector the people i represent well they were very skeptical about this because they
12:13they knew well wait a moment this is not just a tool technology is power
12:19those who control the tools have the power right so uh what we really see now is the fact that
12:28something that was a talk only in close circles only those who are in technology really understood
12:36that certain things were not as simple as they were presented now this has become a societal talk
12:44a politicians start understanding what we are talking about
12:51and i must say
12:54i also have to realize is as this happened because we have been clear enough explaining the risks
13:03and showing what what could be done or has it happened because someone in washington
13:09has been so tough with us again and again the last decision about anthropic and so on that we have
13:16to realize we have to react well unfortunately it has happened because this guy is there if this guy
13:23wasn't in in washington we wouldn't be where we are today but the good news is that once these things
13:29have happened there is not coming back no one believes that even if uh a better government is
13:38in washington things cannot go wrong again so we have proven that the risk exists and so the world is
13:44never going to be the same whether we like it or not that's the new reality so excuse me to
13:49be to be blunt
13:50but uh one year ago i was in china and you know the first time you go to china you
13:58are quite
13:59surprised surprised and impressed to realize that you don't have whatsapp you don't have uber you don't
14:06have any of this application and that china has built a complete i would say proprietary technological
14:13ecosystem so do you think that this is the path that europe has to follow or do you think that
14:21the
14:22sovereignty is a more complex issue is a more complex issue that europe has to tackle in a
14:29quite different way if you ask me i think it is obviously a more complex issue i don't think
14:35protectionism as such is the right answer but the china example what it demonstrates is that it is
14:45possible today we are completely captured we are locked in it's not that if we want we can switch off
14:53we can't do it from one day to another if we decide to do it today unfortunately we are
14:58our political leadership is more or less deciding to do so it's going to take probably 10 years right
15:05we all know that um but the example of china shows that yes it is possible the market alone will
15:15not do
15:15it it's not going to be our market is too fragmented let's say we have a lot of champions even
15:22the sap's
15:22we have a lot of good companies but none of our companies has the weight
15:27and the and the the scale that the american hyperscalers have
15:32so the market alone will probably not be able to do it but if there is an alignment between the
15:37public and the private sector if government really uh conceives a strong industrial policy
15:44in the direction of sovereignty the market can definitely go in that direction and the alternatives
15:51which are already available can become even more efficient and performant and we can absolutely
15:57make it in let's say 10 years time yes if i may i fully agree with uh with what you
16:05told china shows
16:07is showing us that it's possible because if we see china 30 or 40 years ago it was not at
16:12all the same
16:13technology champion we have today so yes it's possible objective is not to ban non-european technologies
16:22from europe it's not this objective is to have freedom of choice again and it's to what we see is
16:30that tech currently is for companies the same thing as air is for human beings we need tech we need
16:38tech
16:39solutions we need strong ecosystems in europe we have a strong market maybe the strongest one we have
16:46for 450 millions of consumers we have 30 million to 33 millions of companies we have talents we have ecosystem
16:59we have innovation we have a lot of strengths we can use to to take control over the tech all
17:07the
17:07technical stack stack we need to to have this real choice freedom of choice again okay so i think i
17:16think
17:16the problem is yeah of course because the problem is clear now the question is which answer are we
17:24able to bring so maybe martin unless you want to talk about the problem again but maybe on in terms
17:31of
17:31solutions because of course you bring solutions for your clients in terms of sovereignty can you maybe
17:36explain us a little bit what what what answer can you bring to these problems sure um i think i
17:45can
17:45build the bridge from what we discussed before i think also here but i would add the political not
17:49only the guard rails to be set by politics and regulators is needed but also the political incentives
17:55and right to make the necessary investments uh as as european industries um is necessary and
18:03we've been talking china i think also the us i would take into also the solution finding because
18:08what we also saw when we started our sovereign business 20 years ago 22 years ago in in the united
18:12states that
18:13the reason that we were able as a player to do that was the right back then still advanced regulatory
18:19framework that clearly defined the rules and the playground of how sovereign digital sovereignty
18:25needs to work right that's nis that's fedram for those knowing that and this is something that
18:31we are urgently missing in europe right there's a good few examples i would call out france being in
18:35paris today at least for us as a business having something like second cloud is something
18:40that we embrace that we appreciate because again this gives us rules but if i go over the river
18:45rhine and i look at germany home market unfortunately that we are not there yet so i'm my big dream
18:51as
18:51an ask to write our political uh leaders is is to get that together help us to set regulatory frameworks
18:58at a european level as much as possible um i'm not dreaming i'm pretty sure there will be national
19:04variations that's clear for us but this will give us the security to invest this will give us as right
19:09somebody has said running running the most business business most critical business processes uh out
19:15there to also design a solution um a sovereign solution that is right common across the markets
19:21we don't want to have piecemeal solutions that work differently in market a versus market b as a
19:26global player i need a solution that's working uh the same way in the us and in india in australia
19:32and
19:32in europe so i need that stability and with you right once we have we have uh that set and
19:38we we
19:38develop the will in europe to do that then the industry will follow right but the incentive part is
19:43i think an important element here as well okay great um just maybe a question because what you say in
19:52if i sum up what you say and sorry if i'm wrong but you say that it's a kind of
19:58freedom of choice
19:59you are able to bring solution and and the sovereignty is how you balance your choices
20:07to be able to be resilient to be able to be to to bring security to your system and of
20:14course to be
20:14able to be efficient and this is kind of balance so what what do you propose maybe to your clients
20:19to be
20:19the more balanced possible uh there is no uh one fits all situation indeed um we we know the we
20:31know
20:31the concerns of our clients their concern is about to be stick with only one provider not having choice
20:38again uh it's to to be dependent and so to lose the choice to have to to just to be
20:48targeted by
20:49price increases by commercial lockings technical lock lockings so to to have these dependencies and
20:57the kill switch scenario so they're afraid of that um once we know what are the concerns or the fears
21:04it depends on the customers uh each each company each organization must think about what is the right
21:13balance for them and the first recommendation we gave to our customers is to say well you have probably
21:21in your activity kind of crown jewels you know this kind of data of application applications of uh of of
21:32of it's uh of ips i don't know assets we will we'll call these assets that are very key for
21:39your company
21:40and you are other assets that are less sensitive and other that that are not sensitive at all first
21:47thing to do is to map map your assets map your data second thing to do map your risks and
21:56what are the risks
21:57you are you are you have to face and what is the in what is the impact on those assets
22:03and once you have
22:05this this wall picture with the assets sensitivity of the assets uh regarding some risks you will define
22:13what is the sovereignty balance you need because for sure sorry for sure for some for some um some assets
22:24you will not need to have something that is fully sovereign we'll give you an example if you are a
22:31e-commerce website maybe you will need to to to to protect some commercial or innovative data but if you
22:40are
22:41in the defense organization of course your need will be very very different you will need to to protect
22:47the information about your guys you have on the on the on operating in a in a country for example
22:53or
22:54or other examples like that so regarding your profile your need your activity of course the picture will be
23:02very different and a good sovereign cloud provider can help you to draw this picture and to choose the right
23:12solutions for you and sovereignty again is the right to choose if you want to choose a solution that is
23:21not sovereign for some assets because you can deal with it it's it's okay okay sebastianio how do you
23:29react to what solange said because she said you need you need to map your data you need to map
23:35your risk
23:35etc is it an effort then that the sme players are able to do or do you need maybe a
23:44more
23:46framework which is more structured where they that they can follow
23:54well uh some smes can others obviously need more of uh of a framework to follow and i think here
24:02is also
24:03where uh the market alone is not going to be as i said earlier is not going to be able
24:08to do it we
24:09need we need a collective effort we need our public sector to give guidance to give framework to give
24:15incentives as as it was said as well because our industry is not going to grow uh if we do
24:22not create
24:22a demand for sovereign alternative solutions and the demand is we believe firstly going to come from
24:28the public procurement public procurement in europe today buys 80 percent of its services the public
24:35sector i'm talking about from foreign providers 80 percent we have rough estimations that we are
24:42talking about maybe 100 billion euro per year which is going from our public sector to foreign providers
24:48if we can if we can move this 100 billion per year from foreign providers to european providers
24:55then we are going to then we're going to change the market because we are going to create uh investment
24:59flows and we're going to create markets where there are no markets but what i want to say is what
25:05is
25:06actually the alternative that europe can build uh and here i think we should not make the mistake of
25:13oversimplifying technology and i'm thinking in particular about our politicians because all politicians may
25:19think ah we have sap we have ovh these are our champions so the germans will say ah we'll bet
25:26everything
25:26on sap the french on ovh cloud ah that's it we have the european champion and so we can replace
25:32as such
25:33the american hyperscalers but wait a second it's not as simple because with all due respect the size the
25:41scale and the market that the americans have is completely on another level if you try to switch
25:49from let's say the microsoft the google the ovh ecosystem to an alternative european one you realize
25:57that it's not just the cloud there's a variety of services which are provided on top of the cloud which
26:07are actually somehow needed and all of these uh innovation and services and software applications and so on
26:15is provided by whom by a large ecosystem of startups and smes so we need to work as an ecosystem
26:24and
26:25create something alternative and we believe we have the the american or maybe the chinese model which is
26:33monolithic which i don't think we should be aiming at creating that creating our european big tech company
26:41we should rather create the european ecosystem where through interoperability federation aggregation
26:48you have the possibility by many different companies especially smes to build together alternatives which
26:56are let me conclude by the way much more resilient much more secure by design because if you depend
27:05on a single company if they fail everything fails we have seen that in in the in the cyber attacks
27:12over
27:13the last few years when microsoft or aws fails when iran bombs a data center of aws in in in
27:20in the arab
27:21countries everything is down if we have a federated system if you bomb one data center things will
27:30continue working so we have the chance to build something which is actually better than what we have
27:36at the moment okay thank you very much on your first point you said that this is very complex we
27:43don't
27:43need to oversimplify it so what i understand is that you absolutely need consulting firms to help you
27:48and no okay um no martin just and then before we we conclude all of us um can you give
27:57us a kind of
27:58very very concrete example on how do you deal with the it depends i mean the choice that you are
28:07giving to your clients are you giving them the choice maybe to operate acp on premise uh are you
28:15giving them the choice to run it on a private cloud on a public cloud on the sovereign cloud what
28:21what are
28:21the different choices that the clients are all of the above yeah um of course we see innovation happening
28:27in the cloud that's our clear strategy we see the agentic ai play um becoming front and center of
28:33our strategy as well but yes we look at all of those options private cloud public cloud in a sovereign
28:37fashion non-sovereign fashion on-prem will stay uh relevant for a while as well and this is what we
28:43see with 99 of our customers that the end solution that we design with them with our partners and the
28:49ecosystem all of that included as well ends up in a hybrid solution there's hardly any customer that fully
28:55goes but right with our fully sovereign solution that also can hold classified data because next
29:00to what you explained right mapping out what your risk appetite your risk profile is and then the
29:05sovereign right protection that you need you also need to look at innovation you also need to look at
29:10costs so all of that together can only be done jointly with the customers with the understanding of
29:15the data as a business process company i would also say with the understanding of the underlying
29:19processes and what what it's worth and then it's also important last point to also look across the stack
29:24because i have the feeling we talk a lot about the infrastructure level about infrastructure as a
29:29service because we also talk a lot about hyperscalers but you also said the ecosystem right we need to
29:34go up the stack and now we talk infrastructure we talk ai but there's 10 000 miles in between in
29:40the
29:41stack and all of that needs to come together um and also fully with you right that also can only
29:46work
29:46if we find the right players who are willing in europe to work together here luckily such an event like
29:52viva tech brings uh those players together and there's many fruitful discussions we are also
29:56seeing as one of the centers of gravity here to uh make something happen at a european level very good
30:02very good thank you very much so maybe to conclude just in one minute and a half each of you
30:07can you
30:08tell us what do you want that the leaders in the room have to take away with them on on
30:13this topic
30:14uh be curious and courageous we stop thinking that we do not have the strengths and the technology in
30:24europe it's not true you can go through viva tech and discover european technology uh strong players
30:32smaller ones so give them try to know them and try to give you a chance to rely on them
30:44thanks a lot martin it's a good one hard to top christian by the way
30:50all good um i would i would add to that um saying invest into this topic as a company don't
31:02say take
31:02it as a side topic bring the right people into the room in your companies bring your information
31:07security officers together with the people uh with the business right within within your organization
31:12owning the processes and make them work together as well because with all the disruption that we
31:17are seeing all the threats out there and all the oh do we have to do this there's also a
31:21chance in
31:21this not only a chance for europe as a continent there's also a chance for every company to take
31:26this as a catalyst for their business for their digital transformation of of their business processes
31:32their business embrace it and i think we europeans have a clever people we are not stupid let's
31:41therefore question the narratives we hear we have a great we have a fantastic example today this very
31:49panel those who have seen the previous program of this panel it was supposed to be a very different
31:55composition it was supposed to be microsoft and aws talking about sovereign cloud can you imagine
32:03is it a joke no they were supposed to be in this panel they were supposed to tell us their
32:08own
32:09narrative and guess what at some point they have seen that in the panel they will have people who can
32:15question their own narrative and where are they well they disappeared it it means yes we can do it as
32:24europeans we can uh we can make our points we can question the reality and we can be strong and
32:33tough
32:33together thank you okay
32:41that's a kind of conclusion thank you very much uh all of you i'm absolutely sure that next year at
32:47vivatech for the 11th anniversary we will have again a roundtable around the sovereignty we will see
32:53how it evolves you know we had a very strong announcement also from the french government uh
32:59yesterday saying that uh palantir will be replaced by chaps vision which is a reopen company uh
33:06for the you know gtsi which is the internal uh spying or security department so yeah we will have a
33:15lot
33:15of events thank you very much uh for your involvement in this roundtable and see you next year thank you
33:22for
33:22your attention
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