Control Your Data Sovereignty

Sovereign Cloud Infrastructure with Kubermatic

Situation

Data Residency Is Not Data Sovereignty

Many organizations assume that storing data in a European data center makes it sovereign. It does not. Under the U.S. CLOUD Act, American authorities can compel any U.S.-headquartered cloud provider to hand over data — regardless of where that data is physically stored. This means that even if your workloads run in Frankfurt or Amsterdam, a U.S. hyperscaler can still be legally required to disclose them.

The problem runs deeper than legal exposure. Many cloud services marketed as ‘sovereign’ still depend on control planes, identity systems, or key management hosted outside the customer’s jurisdiction. That creates a hidden dependency and a real compliance risk, even when the underlying data appears to be local.

At the same time, organizations face tightening regulatory obligations, including the EU Data Act and DORA, the Swiss nFADP. Additionally, government and critical infrastructure organizations face pressure to demonstrate that foreign authorities have no legal access to their systems.

As a result, enterprises are rethinking their cloud strategies. Vendor lock-in, foreign legal exposure, and opaque dependency chains are no longer acceptable. Organizations need infrastructure they actually control.

By 2030, More Than 75% of All Enterprises Outside of the U.S. Will Have a Digital Sovereignty Strategy.

Source: Gartner, Gartner Survey, 2025

How we help

Architecture-First Sovereignty

Kubermatic enables organizations to build resilient, sovereign cloud platforms with full control over their data, operations, and infrastructure. Using proven CNCF open-source technologies, we provide the foundation for a “Second Platform Strategy” that reduces dependency on foreign hyperscalers while keeping critical systems and operations within your jurisdiction.

Kubermatic Kubernetes Platform (KKP)

KKP automates the full Kubernetes lifecycle across cloud, on-premises, and edge environments. This allows organizations to operate large-scale infrastructure consistently while maintaining strict data residency and operational control.

Decoupled Control Planes

True sovereignty requires control over the management layer of your infrastructure. KKP separates the control plane from workload environments, allowing organizations to run management systems in sovereign private clouds or air-gapped environments while maintaining flexibility across regions and providers.

Kubermatic Virtualization

Powered by KubeVirt, Kubermatic Virtualization helps organizations modernize infrastructure while maintaining full operational control. By running virtual machines and cloud-native applications on the same platform, organizations can reduce dependency on proprietary virtualization vendors, avoid restrictive licensing models, and keep critical infrastructure under their own control.

Kubermatic SecureGuard

Built on OpenBao, Kubermatic SecureGuard ensures that your encryption keys and security credentials remain exclusively under your control, entirely removing dependence on foreign or proprietary key management systems.

Use Cases

Launching a Sovereign Cloud Service

The Mission: Build a multi-tenant cloud platform that guarantees 100% regional data residency while matching the performance and agility of global hyperscalers.
The Application: Telecom and public sector providers use KKP, KubeOne, and KubeVirt to build highly available sovereign infrastructure on open-source foundations. Swisscom, for example, migrated 60% of internal workloads within nine months, demonstrating that sovereign platforms can deliver enterprise-scale performance without foreign dependencies. This architecture was recognized by the CNCF as a leading example.

Digital Sovereignty by Design

The Mission: Meet stringent regional financial and cybersecurity regulations without creating operational bottlenecks or slowing down developer velocity.
The Application: Regulated enterprises use KKP to deliver automated “Golden Paths” — pre-configured, fully compliant platform building blocks for developers. By combining this with Kubermatic SecureGuard for automated secret rotation and identity-based access, financial institutions can strictly adhere to frameworks like DORA, SOC 2, and the Swiss nFADP, eliminating the legal risk of foreign data access.

Sovereign Multi-Cloud for Government

The Mission: Build an independent IT ecosystem across multiple cloud providers and on-premises data centers to ensure sensitive data remains entirely outside the jurisdiction of foreign authorities.
The Application: Government bodies and critical infrastructure providers utilize the Platform Mesh architecture within KKP to consume services across multiple isolated control plane instances.

Discover Success Stories

Outcome

Absolute Autonomy and Resilience

By standardizing on Kubermatic’s architecture-first sovereign infrastructure, organizations replace foreign legal exposure and opaque dependencies with a truly autonomous cloud foundation.

Jurisdictional Freedom

Maintain control over critical infrastructure, data, and operations while reducing exposure to foreign legal jurisdiction and external dependencies.

Cost Avoidance

Build portable cloud infrastructure on open-source technologies, avoiding dependency on proprietary platforms and costly vendor-specific licensing models.

Operational Resilience

Operate workloads consistently across cloud, on-premises, and edge environments with the flexibility to adapt infrastructure strategies as regulatory, political, or operational conditions evolve.

Future-Proofing for AI

Standardize on Kubernetes-based infrastructure to run AI workloads across cloud, on-premises, and edge environments while maintaining operational control and compliance.