Cloud supplier publishes ‘tech sovereignty’ plan for UK

The federal government ought to reframe its expertise technique to make sure the UK doesn’t lose management of its digital infrastructure and knowledge within the fallout of potential geopolitical developments, urges home cloud supplier Civo.

Printed on 30 September 2025, Civo’s Tech Sovereignty Agenda outlines seven high-level ideas to assist reframe the federal government’s tech technique, with a selected deal with defending and nurturing the UK’s homegrown tech ecosystem.

Because it stands, the federal government is trying to make the UK a man-made intelligence (AI) superpower – with plans to quickly increase the nation’s sovereign compute capability and create AI development zones to facilitate the constructing of latest datacentres – with huge investments for the underlying cloud infrastructure coming from Microsoft, Google and Amazon Net Companies (AWS) up to now.

On this context, Civo’s name for a brand new method follows warnings from the UK’s competitors watchdog, the Competitors and Markets Authority (CMA), which concluded in late July 2025 that Microsoft and AWS ought to face “focused and bespoke” interventions to curb the competition-harming behaviours of those corporations.

It additionally comes on the heels of senior Microsoft workers admitting to the French senate in June 2025 that the corporate can not assure the sovereignty of European knowledge saved and processed in its companies, and revelations revealed by Pc Weekly that UK public sector knowledge hosted in Microsoft’s hyperscale cloud infrastructure might be processed in additional than 100 nations.

The ideas outlined by Civo subsequently embrace “sovereign procurement”, to permit UK-owned and operated suppliers to be prioritised for extremely delicate infrastructure workloads; “clear funding”, to make sure there’s oversight of what’s delivered off the again of international funding pledges; “resilience first”, to make multi-supplier preparations necessary for vital nationwide infrastructure; and “knowledge safety”, to make sure there are clear safeguards in place defending UK knowledge from international jurisdictions.

Different ideas deal with creating devoted “homegrown backing” for UK tech corporations; making a “partnership of equals” to ensure financial worth is retained by the UK slightly than misplaced by means of web outflows of capital; and establishing “sovereign cloud” capabilities as a nationwide safety precedence.

The cloud supplier argues that, at a time of rising geopolitical uncertainty, it is important that nation-states look to construct resilience into their digital infrastructure.

Highlighting the significance of knowledge storage and the jurisdictions that may entry it, Civo added that discussions round digital sovereignty shouldn’t be restricted to issues across the bodily geography of datacentres, and should additionally embody questions of management, belief and entry.

Responding to a survey from Civo – the outcomes of which had been revealed in June 2025 – 83% of UK IT leaders stated they had been apprehensive that geopolitical developments could have an effect on their capability to regulate and entry their knowledge, with 61% of decision-makers now viewing knowledge sovereignty as a strategic precedence.

The polling additionally recognized a visibility hole, with simply 35% of respondents saying they’ve full perception into the jurisdiction the place their organisation’s knowledge is hosted.

Within the UK particularly, the federal government’s first Continual dangers evaluation, revealed in July 2025 by the Cupboard Workplace, famous how “the rising dominance of a restricted group of service suppliers is creating dependency dangers” – together with operational, monetary and safety vulnerabilities – whereas additionally limiting market innovation and buyer alternative.

The evaluation additionally cited separate findings from the CMA’s “cloud companies market investigation”, which discovered that 70% to 90% of the UK cloud computing market is dominated by simply two suppliers, Microsoft and AWS.

Printed on 31 July 2025, that investigation concluded that “competitors isn’t working nicely” within the UK cloud market.

In keeping with issues about the place UK knowledge is saved and accessed, Pc Weekly reported in late August 2025 that Microsoft has refused handy over essential details about its knowledge flows to Scottish policing our bodies, whereas concurrently admitting that it’s unable to ensure the sovereignty of knowledge held and processed inside its Workplace 365 infrastructure.

In late September, Pc Weekly then revealed – off the again of an evaluation of Microsoft’s personal distributed documentation on-line, performed by impartial safety marketing consultant Owen Sayers – that Microsoft personnel or contractors can remotely entry Workplace 365 knowledge from 105 totally different nations, utilizing 148 totally different sub-processors.

This consists of a variety of countries with none UK or European knowledge adequacy agreements, together with China.

Though the documentation – which is buried in non-indexed, difficult-to-find net pages – got here to mild within the context of Pc Weekly investigating police cloud use, the difficulty of routine knowledge transfers inside Microsoft’s cloud structure impacts the entire of the UK authorities and public sector, that are obliged by the G-Cloud and Tepas frameworks to make sure knowledge stays within the UK by default.

“Our Tech Sovereignty Agenda is a name to motion to grab the alternatives of UK tech. We’ve got seen loads of funding in current months within the UK – all excellent news. What we’d like extra of is a recognition that the UK’s tech future can’t be totally outsourced overseas,” stated Civo CEO Mark Increase.

“It’s too vital, and we’ve an excessive amount of to supply at house. We have to deliver collectively the perfect of world tech with a thriving homegrown sovereign tech ecosystem, defending our digital infrastructure from overreliance on just a few international corporations, and giving the UK the chance to thrive by itself phrases on this courageous new world.”