Overview

European CIOs are being asked to hold two ideas at once. Hyperscalers remain the fastest route to modern security, AI and scale — and regulators, boards and increasingly customers expect real answers about who ultimately controls the data, the keys and the ability to walk away if circumstances demand it.

This briefing sets out a working framework for that decision, built from a closed-door roundtable of enterprise architects and CIOs across retail, banking, insurance, manufacturing, consumer goods, online gaming and logistics. 

About This Report

This briefing is based on a facilitated roundtable held on 1 July 2026, conducted under Chatham House Rule, with enterprise architects and CIOs from retail, banking, insurance, manufacturing, consumer goods, online gaming and logistics organizations across Europe. Contributions are pooled and anonymized throughout; illustrative examples have been generalized so that no organization is identifiable from its contents.

Who was in the room

The roundtable brought together enterprise architects and CIOs from 11 organizations to discuss their approaches, experiences and priorities around cloud sovereignty. The findings in this report draw directly on the perspectives and practical insights shared during that discussion.

Attendees:

• Andy Anand Yegnaswami, ANWB B.V.

• Lukas Heilmann, Rohde & Schwarz GmbH & Co. KG

• Praveen Shrivastava, MediaMarktSaturn

• Sathya Narayana, Reckitt Benckiser

• Harald Badstieber, Allianz Technology SE

• Wail Tkhissi, Africa Global Logistics

• Kaustubh Joshi, Kindred Group Plc

• Simen Thorsrud, Coop Norge SA

• Holger Anspach, abcfinance GmbH

• Karl Rodax, Prinzhorn Holding GmbH