from Dietrich Bartsch
Cloud is no longer an experiment—it has become the backbone of modern value creation. Europe’s enterprises are migrating at a pace that would have seemed unrealistic just a few years ago. Yet with every step toward greater scalability, automation, and AI adoption, one form of uncertainty keeps growing—one that is surprisingly under-discussed: trust.
Technology itself is not the bottleneck. It is mature, battle-tested, and globally standardized. The real challenge lies in how organizations redefine responsibility, control, and security within an architecture they no longer physically own. Between regulatory requirements, rising threat levels, and increasingly complex operating models, a tension emerges—one that CIOs, public-sector leaders, and security teams face every day.
Cloud sovereignty therefore does not mean using “less cloud,” but using it more deliberately. The question is not whether hyperscalers are secure, but how organizations can build structures that make trust reproducible—through architecture, governance, and people.
This is where our analysis begins.
1. Trust – the Real Challenge of the Cloud Era
Europe has entered a pace of digitalization that would have been almost unimaginable just a few years ago. Cloud adoption is rising, companies are migrating large parts of their IT, and hyperscalers are no longer specialist tools but the foundation of digital value creation. Yet the faster this development accelerates, the more visible a paradox becomes: the technology grows – but trust does not automatically grow with it.
CIOs and IT leaders experience this contradiction every day. On one side are scalability, speed, and innovation. On the other side emerge new regulatory grey areas, growing dependencies, and a sense of losing control. The key question of our time is therefore no longer whether the cloud is secure. The real question is: How do you build trust in a system you can no longer physically control – yet entrust with business-critical decisions?
2. The Fallacy of Perceived Security
Many organizations rely on their on-premises infrastructure because it is visible and therefore feels familiar. But this closeness often creates only the illusion of security. The data shows a different picture: most security incidents are not caused by technical weaknesses of the providers but by human error, historically grown systems, or a lack of process discipline.
On-premises feels safer because it is tangible – not because it is actually more secure. Unpatched systems, outdated hardware, missing redundancy, and unclear responsibilities often make the supposedly familiar server room behind closed doors more vulnerable than any cloud region. Real security does not arise from proximity to servers but from structure, automation, and governance. The real question is not: “Where is the server located?” – but: “How well is the operation organized?”
3. The Human Factor – the Bottleneck of Every Security Architecture
Despite all progress by the providers, one truth remains: the greatest vulnerability does not sit in the data center but in everyday work. Phishing, improvisation, misconfigured roles, shared logins, expired certificates – almost all incidents start in the same place: with people.
Vendors invest billions in resilience, encryption, and automated security mechanisms. Yet these measures only take effect when the practical risks of daily operations are minimized. Trust is not created through new tools but through a culture that prevents misconfigurations, through processes that automate control, and through teams that know how to handle modern architectures. Security is not a software problem – it is an organizational problem.
4. Multicloud – More Freedom or Just Nicely Packaged Complexity?
At first glance, multicloud seems like the antidote to dependency. More providers supposedly mean more freedom. In reality, however, the opposite is often true: operational complexity increases, effort grows, and costs explode. Each system requires its own governance structures, its own certificate logic, its own security processes – all of which must be run in parallel.
Organizations that lose themselves in multicloud concepts do not eliminate risks – they multiply them. Technical diversity rarely leads to more sovereignty, but rather to a higher likelihood of human error, inconsistent processes, and fragmented security. The goal of sovereign cloud architectures is not breadth but clarity. Trust emerges where complexity is reduced, not artificially multiplied.
5. Why AWS – When Built Correctly – Strengthens Governance and Resilience
Many discussions about cloud security still revolve around the question of whether hyperscalers can be trusted at all. A look at the architecture answers this clearly. AWS operates data centers with security and resilience mechanisms that on-premises environments can hardly reproduce economically. Physically isolated availability zones, redundant power and network infrastructures, undisclosed locations, continuous audits, and certifications – the level of security is not only high, it is reproducible.
However, this potential only becomes visible when architectures are deliberately designed. A cloud environment is only as secure as the decisions that shape its structure. When built correctly, organizations gain not less control but moreresilience, more governance, and more transparency than in most traditional data centers.
6. Legal Insight: The CLOUD Act and Europe’s Trust Dilemma
In Europe, the CLOUD Act is often perceived as a symbol of losing control. The U.S. law allows authorities, under certain conditions, to request access to data from U.S. providers – even if the data is stored in Frankfurt, Paris, or Stockholm. This possibility weighs heavier than its actual frequency, because transparency reports show: the real release of European corporate data is rare.
But legal risks arise not only from events but from possibilities. And this possibility significantly influences European organizations. The real question is no longer: “Where is our data stored?” but: “Who may theoretically access it?” This uncertainty is a major reason why requirements for encryption, key management, and sovereign operating models are increasing.
7. Redefining Data Sovereignty: The European Sovereign Cloud
With the European Sovereign Cloud, AWS is attempting to resolve an apparent contradiction: full cloud performance combined with complete European control. Data resides exclusively in the EU, operations are performed by EU personnel, and the platform is technically isolated from the global AWS network. This creates a model that can be used in highly regulated industries without legal grey zones for the first time.
The real potential, however, lies not only in compliance but in something else: sovereignty becomes an innovation accelerator. Organizations can use cutting-edge cloud technology without constantly having to balance efficiency and control. Scaling and sovereignty no longer exclude each other – they reinforce one another.
8. The Real Risk Factor – and How to Address It
Transparency reports from hyperscalers show almost no cases in which customer data was transferred without legal basis or in large volumes. Actual incidents arise almost exclusively within the organization itself. Focusing on providers often distracts from the central task: security risks emerge where processes are unclear, roles are undefined, or operational shortcuts shape daily routines.
A cloud becomes trustworthy only when organizations take responsibility for its operation. Trust is not a feature of the platform – it is the result of one’s own discipline.
9. How to Build a Cloud That Forgives Mistakes – Instead of Amplifying Them
A sovereign cloud is always built on three levels simultaneously: technology, governance, and human behavior. Only the interplay of all three enables resilience. Modern architectures distribute critical systems across multiple availability zones, automate certificate and key management, and use policy-as-code to prevent misconfigurations from ever becoming productive. Governance safeguards data quality, creates traceable processes, prevents shadow IT, and forms the foundation of auditable AI models. And finally, the human factor is transformed into a controllable variable through training, awareness programs, and practiced response routines.
These three levels are not a theoretical model but the prerequisite for any company that wants to work seriously with AI, automation, and data-driven value creation.
10. Conclusion: Trust Is Not a Technical Feature – It Is a Leadership Decision
The future of data-intensive business models will not be decided by the fastest systems but by the most reliable ones. Trust does not emerge from choosing a hyperscaler but from the willingness to take responsibility for architecture, data quality, and security culture. Organizations that view cloud and sovereignty not as opposites but as two sides of the same decision will progress much faster than those that constantly oscillate between the two.
And this is exactly where M2 comes in: as a partner that combines technical excellence with clear governance, reduces operational complexity, and helps companies turn their cloud strategy into a solid foundation for scaling and resilience. Because the decisive question is not: “Is the cloud secure?” – but: How sovereign is the organization that uses it?