We’re thrilled to announce the new VMware Sovereign Cloud initiative. Through this initiative, VMware is partnering with cloud service providers to deliver cloud services on sovereign digital infrastructure to customers in regulated industries.
Partnerships are an essential part of VMware’s multi-cloud strategy and VMware is committed to forming strong partnerships with cloud service providers to deliver customer success and accelerate digital innovation. VMware Cloud Providers play a vital role in fulfilling customers’ needs and solving complex enterprise IT challenges and now have a tremendous opportunity to capitalize on the digital sovereignty trend and expand their vertical coverage and range of service offerings.
Discussions around data and cloud sovereignty are becoming more frequent and fundamental to a customer’s cloud strategy today. The potential situations of customer data being unsecured and accessed by foreign entities provide a critical need to envision a common set of design and operational guidelines that enable cloud sovereignty.
VMware understands the need for efficient, software-defined sovereign clouds and is developing a two-phase approach to tackle this growing opportunity by introducing the following:
- VMware Sovereign Cloud framework: The framework defines key characteristics to which a cloud can be assessed as sovereign. These characteristics include data sovereignty and jurisdictional control, data access and integrity, data security and compliance, data independence and mobility, and data innovation and analytics. The framework provides technical guidance, best practices, and principles for design and operational considerations.
- VMware Sovereign Cloud initiative: VMware recognizes the value of architecting a sovereign cloud and is establishing a specific designation for VMware Cloud Providers that meet specific requirements and demonstrate that they are meeting the requirements of the VMware Sovereign Cloud framework. The cloud providers in the VMware Sovereign Cloud initiative must complete an assessment on the design, build, and operations of their cloud environments and their capability to offer a sovereign digital infrastructure. Through the VMware Sovereign Cloud initiative, VMware aims to connect customers with VMware Sovereign Cloud providers to achieve the scale and constant security to manage their most critical data.
With the emergence of data policies, it becomes even more critical that customers adopt a multi-cloud approach and identify their highly sensitive data sets with sovereignty requirements to be placed in specialized sovereign clouds and their less critical data in other environments. Furthermore, the GAIA-X initiative in the EU serves as a strong example of the concerns around digital dependencies on foreign providers and the necessity to establish a national digital capability. The new VMware Sovereign Cloud initiative and framework will assist VMware and its cloud providers to provide education on sovereign cloud, particularly providing awareness to data sovereignty, residency, access, security, integrity, compliance, and control, and ultimately help organizations understand how to best manage their most sensitive data.
With this initiative, VMware aims to help government and regulated industry customers with extremely sensitive and critical data execute their cloud strategies by connecting them to VMware Sovereign Cloud Providers. These providers are proficient in VMware technologies, operate a VMware Cloud Verified environment, demonstrate compliance and expertise in regional data privacy laws and operational standards, advocate for more customer rights over the protection of customer information, and deliver more secure sovereign cloud solutions, particularly in regulated industries and public and private sectors. VMware Sovereign Cloud Providers can also accelerate the growth of their local business by more securely expanding to government data, and further develop a national capability for digital infrastructure and resilience.
The first partners to receive the VMware Sovereign Cloud designation are: UKCloud, OVHcloud, AUCloud, Datacom, TietoEvry, Telefonica, Noovle, NxtGen, ThinkOn, and Telmex. These cloud providers are VMware Cloud Verified and offer sovereign cloud services that align to the VMware Sovereign Cloud framework. Cloud providers in the initiative are required to self-attest against pre-defined technical requirements based on the VMware Sovereign Cloud framework.
Learn more about the VMware Sovereign Cloud initiative
For Cloud Providers: please visit our new Sovereign Cloud service page and watch this breakout session to learn more about the why and how to build and deliver a sovereign cloud.
For Customers: please visit vmware.com/cloud-solutions/sovereign-cloud.html to learn more about the solution and cloud.vmware.com/providers/sovereign-cloud to find your local VMware Sovereign Cloud provider.
Check out all the latest innovations for VMware Cloud Providers at VMworld 2021 here.
