70% of CEOs consider technological sovereignty important or very important, according to a recent report published by the consulting firm Gartner. For 35% of CEOs, this issue is among the top five concerns of their executive committees.
This concern is already being transferred to conversations between companies and technology providers. Flexxible, a Spanish technology company specialized in digital work environments, is also receiving more and more questions about the location and processing of data. This concern is especially visible among clients in the public sector, banking and financial services, areas in which CEOs and technology managers pay increasing attention to information sovereignty.
Security, residence and data protection
Gartner puts numbers to some of these concerns. Safety is the most cited by CEOs (60%), ahead of competitiveness (43%). The residence of the data and protection against foreign influences appear in 31% of the responses.
In Europe, more than 40% of CEOs give technological sovereignty the highest level of importance. The report relates this concern to factors such as regulation, supply chains and the geopolitical situation, elements that are acquiring increasing weight in the strategic decisions of CEOs.
“We are increasingly asked where the data is going to be and where it is going to be processed. We see it especially in the public sector, banking and financial services. A few years ago it was not one of the first questions that arose, but now it can determine the choice of a technological solution,” explains Sebastian Prat, CEO of Flexxible.
According to Sebastian Prat, CEO of Flexxible, the location of data is only part of technological sovereignty. In the case of Flexxible, the data associated with the FlexxClient service is stored and processed in Europe. In fact, FlexxClient allows you to manage an organization’s devices through an agent installed on the computers and a web portal. The latter operates on a hyperscaler in the West Europe region, in Amsterdam.
For Flexxible, knowing where the data is is only part of the story. “Companies want to be increasingly clear about where their data is, what infrastructure is behind the solutions they use and who is involved in its management. Our goal is to help them improve the experience of their employees and the efficiency of their business without adding complexity,” adds Prat.
Concern for technological sovereignty encompasses issues of location, data processing, infrastructure, providers and the jurisdiction under which it operates.
Concerns about technological sovereignty therefore encompass issues ranging from the location and processing of data to infrastructure, providers and the jurisdiction under which they operate. For CEOs, all of these elements can have direct implications on their organizations’ investment decisions and technology strategy.
European institutions are also making moves. In June, the European Commission presented the technological sovereignty package, which includes initiatives related to cloud, artificial intelligence, semiconductors and open source software. A context that places technological sovereignty among the issues that CEOs must consider within their digital and risk management strategies.
