Executive Summary
Cloud providers have been rapidly adding data center locations around the globe, making it easier for enterprises to meet statutory and regulatory data residency requirements. Recently, though, demand for sovereign cloud services has been on the rise, requiring data centers that are fully contained within the country and (ideally) operated only by nationals of the country where the data center is located.
Enterprises and public entities sensitive to the subject of sovereignty have been successful in lobbying practically all major cloud providers to offer sovereign solutions, with the question now being when a sovereign cloud offering will open in which country. Constellation expects a similar ‘monopoly’ race to happen as with the original data center location race.
Along the same lines, HA and resilience requirements will be relevant, with providers needing to provide three data centers to form a fully HA-compatible sovereign cloud (production, backup, and upgraded data centers).
Threshold Criteria
- Available on 3 continents
- Over 200 paying customers
- More than 2 sovereign cloud locations, with the plan to add at least one, if not two, per calendar year
- At least ten machine/instance sizes
- Ability to run generative AI workloads
- Ability to run Hadoop/HDFS-based applications / aka Lakehouses
- Availability of at least one common/mainstream transactional database
- Redundancy/high-availability concepts beyond a single data center location
- A credible strategy with tangible software assets that evolves a vertical cloud strategy
- Strong partnerships with established software vendors
- Strong partnerships with key open-source initiatives
- Strong partnerships with system integrators
- Widely accepted security and privacy certifications
- Ability to run dedicated/secure government loads on at least 2 continents
- Operation by in-country national passport holders is available or planned in the next year
The Constellation ShortList
Constellation evaluates more than 20 solutions categorized in this market. The Constellation ShortList is determined by client inquiries, partner conversations, customer references, vendor selection projects, market share, and internal research.
- Amazon Web Services (AWS) with AWS European Sovereign Cloud
- Google Cloud Platform (GCP)
- IBM Cloud (IBM Cloud Satellite / IBM Sovereign Core)
- Microsoft Cloud/Azure
- OVHCloud
- Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI)
- Scaleway
- T-Systems
Frequency of Evaluation
Each Constellation ShortList is updated at least once per year. Updates may occur after six months if deemed necessary.
Evaluation Services
Constellation clients can work with the analyst and research team to conduct a more thorough discussion of this Constellation ShortList. Constellation can also provide guidance in vendor selection and contract negotiation.