Minimum Viable Sovereignty: Insights That Build on Forrester’s Report

Digital sovereignty is gaining urgency as organizations parse evolving data regulations and heightened geopolitical risk. Forrester recently explored these themes in depth and concluded that aspirational labels matter less than real-world outcomes. Today’s global enterprises need a stack that is inspectable, portable and operationally sovereign. It must consistently deliver evidence of control across software, deployment and support. Fortunately, there are ways to actively work toward minimum viable sovereignty without sacrificing agility or reach.

Key takeaways:

• Forrester recommends minimum viable sovereignty, a pragmatic approach to reducing risk and fueling momentum.
• An open source foundation supports sovereignty because you can see what you’re running, assess provenance and spot supply-chain risk.
• “Sovereignty requires trust.  Clients come to SUSE because open source delivers that trust.” (Matthias G. Eckermann, senior director of technology strategy, SUSE)

Data residency vs sovereignty

Residency relates to the placement of data in a specific region. Sovereignty incorporates control over how that data is managed, accessed and protected. A database hosted in the EU can still fail local compliance reviews if troubleshooting is handled by support engineers in California. Instead of focusing on where systems run, sovereignty requires a full understanding of who controls them and how they evolve over time.

To succeed in the modern marketplace, organizations need clear ownership, transparency and the ability to redeploy workloads when various external conditions change. As Forrester’s report notes, minimum viable sovereignty offers a practical framework for working toward this posture. 

Sovereignty across your stack

Holistic digital sovereignty spans multiple layers, including people, software, data, network, infrastructure, and AI. While the scope is multifaceted and inherently organization-specific, the following three controls are foundational for many teams:

• Software inspectability helps teams assess code provenance and inventory supply-chain components. By making components visible with software bills of materials (SBOMs), teams can see what they run.
• Deployment portability means that workloads can move between environments without redesign. If you favor cloud-agnostic runtimes, your applications can more easily run on-premises, in sovereign regions or in global clouds.
• Operations and support-data handling standards define who can access troubleshooting data, where it is stored and how it is protected. Documentation often includes roles, storage locations, retention, encryption and access approvals.

Reduce risk with a phased path

Working toward minimum viable sovereignty is often most achievable with a phased approach. Start by making software inspectable, either by relying on open source software or by making vendor requests. When vendors provide source code access and comprehensive SBOM documentation, you increase baseline transparency. This will support your audits and help you build trust with compliance teams.

Next, prove your deployment portability. Test redeployment in at least two venues — whether on-premises, in a sovereign cloud or with a public hyperscaler. Run a redeploy drill with a representative application to measure timing, surface hidden dependencies and validate your exit strategy. 

Finally, document support-data assurance through detailed access mapping. Identify who handles escalations, where support logs are stored and how encryption protects data flows. Keep in mind that, as AI oversight requirements grow, clear documentation of data lineage and model governance will become even more critical.

Get ready to leverage digital sovereignty

Leading enterprises are actively navigating these challenges and implementing sovereignty frameworks that will scale across regions and adapt to evolving regulatory demands. Access a complimentary copy of Forrester’s report, Leverage Digital Sovereignty to Break Free From Foreign Influences on Your IT Stack, to learn more.