There are clear opportunities for the channel to tap into the rising demand for data sovereignty and deliver a range of supporting services.
A desire to know where data resides and to gain greater visibility in the age of artificial intelligence (AI) has driven a move by customers across the UK and Europe to ensure their information sits close to home.
That trend has sparked opportunities for partners to deliver a range of options that have the potential to help customers with their larger digital transformation objectives.
“Rather than positioning data sovereignty as a standalone offering, the insightful way would be to view it as data sovereignty + operational sovereignty + technology sovereignty,” said Louis Hood, director of global partnerships and channels at Percona.
He advised the channel to start by getting a firm understanding of what customers are trying to achieve and why sovereignty matters to their organisations.
“Once you understand what deployments your customers have, you can take them through the potential pain points and what they might have to migrate or change. This might involve some major shifts where they have to implement new database instances that run on infrastructure they control, so that would lead to more hybrid or private cloud deployments,” said Hood.
Don Murray, CEO at enterprise migration specialist Safe Software, said the advantages for those that add data sovereignty as a focus are in the services that could be added to the offering.
“Partners shouldn’t sell a subscription and move on. Instead, they should deploy software where the customer actually needs it. That deployment work is a service opportunity, and it’s where partners can strengthen relationships. A customer’s sovereignty requirements should not create a problem, but instead a conversation to build upon,” he said.
Partners that can offer a range of vendor services from around the world, with a variety of transparent, sovereign and secure services, will be well-positioned to support customer sovereignty needs
Filippo Sanesi, OVHcloud
“Sovereignty has never been so important to organisations. Customers don’t want a single answer to sovereignty; they want choices. Some need everything behind their own firewall, and we have heard the term ‘air-gapped’ more in the past year than ever before – meaning the deployment is not connected to the internet much of the time,” added Murray.
Filippo Sanesi, global partner programme director at OVHcloud, said there were strong prospects for those across the channel that position themselves as sovereignty experts.
“Partners that can offer a range of vendor services from around the world, with a variety of transparent, sovereign and secure services, will be well-positioned to support customer sovereignty needs,” he said.
Hood agreed that the prospects for the channel around data sovereignty remain solid as demand continues to rise.
“I am bullish for the strongest growth opportunities through 2026-2030 to occur from partnerships with sovereign cloud providers, global systems integrators and AI infrastructure providers. An algorithm for future success would look like: AI + Percona + sovereignty + multicloud freedom,” he said.
“The customer segments and vertical markets that would benefit most or even drive these initiatives are government, public sector, financial services, healthcare and critical infrastructure,” Hood added. “The conversations are occurring in the boardroom versus being an IT discussion. This gives us at Percona a seat at the table, creating a long-term growth opportunity for us and our channel partners.”
