Digital sovereignty will become a core component of the national security strategies of every country around the world by 2030, according to Gartner.
“As dependency risks rise, sovereignty is shifting from a question of location to an economic and operational survivability imperative,” says Rene Buest, senior director analyst at Gartner. “Business and IT executives can no longer assume foreign partners will support them indefinitely, or that local providers will never be acquired. Dependencies that once delivered efficiency must now be treated as potential business continuity risks.”
Gartner analysts predict that by 2029, more than 90% of all organisations in the European Union (EU) will have a digital sovereignty strategy.
“This shows the EU passed a point of no return on digital sovereignty and reflects the pursuit of greater self-sufficiency across the entire digital sovereignty stack, including data, technology, operations and AI,” says Buest.
Full sovereignty is out of reach
However, Gartner said the goal of a completely sovereign technology stack is out of reach.
“The global technology supply chain is too interconnected, and many critical dependencies cannot be replaced at a commercially viable scale,” says Bettina Tratz-Ryan, vice-president analyst at Gartner.
“The immediate priority for business and IT leaders should be strategic optionality:identifying where dependencies create unacceptable risk, where resilience is sufficient and where managed interdependence remains the most viable option,” says Tratz-Ryan.
SovTech is the foundation of digital sovereignty
As organizations seek to operate critical applications independently and maintain true autonomy during disruptions, sovereign tech (SovTech) is emerging as the foundation of digital sovereignty.
SovTech secures operations against vendor and geopolitical service cutoffs.
“SovTech ensures an organization’s local operations will not collapse if a provider withdraws its intellectual property, it keeps AI-created value within national borders and it preserves an organization’s ability to act independently during a crisis,” says Tratz-Ryan.