OpenText bets on sovereign cloud and signs agreements with AWS Sovereign Cloud and Google Cloud
The massive spread of artificial intelligence in companies and entities of all kinds, including public administration and organizations operating in regulated sectors, has made it clear that public cloud services offered by hyperscalers are no longer sufficient. The issue is not related to performance but to the guarantees offered in terms of privacy and data sovereignty: entrusting extremely sensitive data to companies operating outside the EU is a risk that cannot be taken. This is due to the potential consequences of the Cloud Act and the risk of reliance on third-party vendors. For this reason, an increasing number of companies are bringing data, or at least part of it, back in-house, to on-premise data centers. At the same time, new sovereign cloud solutions are emerging, such as those offered by AWS and Google Cloud, which have established parallel infrastructures that are operationally independent.
OpenText, a Canadian company specializing in the secure management of information for AI, relies on these services and has recently signed two important agreements to ensure greater control over corporate data. The first is a collaboration with AWS Sovereign Cloud, and the second with Google Cloud.
OpenText's Bet on Sovereign Cloud
As mentioned, there are two new developments regarding data sovereignty announced by OpenText. Regarding the agreement with AWS Sovereign Cloud, the Canadian company has made available the solutions OpenText Content Management, OpenText Documentum Content Management, OpenText Core Application Security, and OpenText Core Service Management on the European sovereign infrastructure of the cloud giant.
A second agreement has been signed with Google Cloud and S3NS, an alliance between the French security specialist Thales and Google Cloud itself. In this second case, the goal is to create a hybrid architecture of trusted cloud for Europe, delivered from France, which allows clients to keep the workloads of the most sensitive data within an environment subject to local governance while safely leveraging the cloud services of hyperscalers for non-sensitive workloads and to support innovation and scalability. In practice, as explained by Shannon Bell, Executive Vice President, Chief Digital Officer, and Chief Information Officer of OpenText, the company is committed to "providing options to meet regulatory compliance and to have a protected environment to drive AI innovation."
With New EU Regulations, Sovereign Cloud Becomes the Infrastructure of Choice for Sensitive Workloads
If until recently the need for a sovereign cloud was felt only by companies operating in specific sectors, such as healthcare or finance, with the introduction of regulations such as NIS 2 and DORA, the scope of companies that must comply with specific obligations regarding the processing of sensitive data has greatly expanded. "European regulatory pressure is pushing towards stricter requirements for operational autonomy, mandatory data residency in the EU, and legal protections that drive the need for sovereign infrastructures," explains Bell. "This influences AI adoption because global implementations on public cloud often fail to fully comply with all regulations." According to Bell, this is pushing some companies to adopt a hybrid sovereign cloud model, alternating between public and sovereign clouds depending on the type of data being processed. An approach that is also impacting the strategies of companies: "Investments in AI are shifting towards compliance-ready designed platforms," states Bell.
OpenText's announcements go in this direction, aiming to provide customers with the necessary confidence to innovate on a large scale, without losing control of their data. As mentioned, this is a fundamental prerequisite for those operating in specific regulated sectors, which are driving the push to adopt sovereign cloud solutions. However, according to Bell, even those who do not have to meet such stringent requirements will benefit from operating on sovereign infrastructures. In the future, an increasing number of software providers will likely design their solutions to be deployed on sovereign clouds "in order to offer a strategic advantage in meeting customers' preferred distribution model."
Are EU Laws Slowing Down the Pace of Innovation?
As is always the case with the introduction of new regulations in the tech world, the industry is divided between those who welcome the clarity and guarantees offered by laws and those who see them as a brake on innovation. An inevitable dualism, says Bell: "Discussions about the impact of regulations are always present, but successful companies are those that invest in data quality and governance as the basis for AI." Bell also emphasizes that "those who have already invested in information management are in an excellent position to benefit from AI more quickly, since AI requires valid data and good governance." For this reason, "OpenText responds to this need by combining the innovation of hyperscalers with an independently governed operating model, providing customers with the confidence needed to modernize while keeping data, access, and operations firmly under regional control."