Reliance on a small number of global cloud providers raises fundamental questions for the federal government, businesses and civil society regarding digital self-determination. Hyperscalers such as AWS, Microsoft and Google control key parts of the digital infrastructure – whilst the demand for transparent, interoperable alternatives from Europe is growing.

A recent article highlights exactly how the Sovereign Cloud Stack (SCS) addresses this issue: through open, certifiable standards, a modular software stack and practical knowledge transfer. The focus is on the question of how digital sovereignty can be formulated not merely as a political objective, but translated into concrete, verifiable requirements for cloud infrastructures – going beyond buzzwords such as „hosting in Europe“ or „GDPR-compliant“.

The article explains why interoperability is the key to combating lock-in effects, how the SCS certification model makes sovereignty measurable, and which technical building blocks within the SCS ecosystem are already available for productive use today. And it makes it clear that sovereignty is not a product – but a shared task to be shaped collectively.

The full article can be found in the the latest issue of the FIfF Communications 2/2026 published.