Digital Sovereignty: Challenges and Solutions for SMBs

Digital Sovereignty: Concrete Challenges and Solutions for SMBs

83% of European cloud and software spending benefits US providers. This figure, revealed by the Cigref (France’s leading association of large enterprise CIOs) and cited in the French Council of Ministers in June 2025, sums up the scale of the problem.

AWS, Microsoft, and Google control between 70 and 80% of cloud services in France. Your emails, files, customer data, analytics, collaboration tools: the probability that most of it flows through American infrastructure is overwhelming.

Digital sovereignty is not a concept reserved for large corporations or political speeches. It’s a strategic question for every SMB that depends on tools it doesn’t control.

What Is Digital Sovereignty?

Digital sovereignty refers to the ability of a state, organization, or individual to control its data, infrastructure, and digital tools. It’s the idea that decisions about your data should remain in your hands — not in those of a foreign government or a company subject to a jurisdiction you don’t control.

The Three Dimensions of Sovereignty

Data sovereignty: where is your data stored and who can access it? The US CLOUD Act allows American authorities to demand access to data held by any US company, regardless of where it’s stored.
Technological sovereignty: do your tools rely on technologies you can audit, replace, or evolve? Or are you locked into a vendor ecosystem you can no longer exit?
Legal sovereignty: which law applies to your data? European law (GDPR)? Or US law (FISA, CLOUD Act) which may take precedence in practice?

These three dimensions are interdependent. Data hosted in Europe but accessed through US software subject to the CLOUD Act is not sovereign. European software hosted on AWS is not fully sovereign either. True sovereignty requires simultaneous control of data, technology, and legal framework.

Why Now?

Geopolitical tensions between Europe and the United States have made this urgent. US trade policy, uncertainties around the EU-US Data Privacy Framework, and Europe’s structural dependency on Big Tech converge to create systemic risk.

In June 2025, France’s Digital Minister launched a call for projects worth tens of millions of euros to drive a European alternative to Big Tech, with the goal of doubling French cloud providers’ market share by 2030.

The geopolitical context has changed the equation. US tariffs on European products, threats of economic sanctions, and the potential weaponization of digital technologies as political leverage have transformed digital sovereignty from an academic subject into an immediate operational concern.

Why SMBs Are Concerned

The Invisible Dependency

Most SMBs don’t realize the extent of their dependency:

Analytics: Google Analytics (US servers, CLOUD Act applicable)
Email: Gmail / Microsoft 365 (data on US servers)
Storage: Google Drive / OneDrive / Dropbox (same)
CRM: HubSpot, Salesforce (US companies)
Website: Cloudflare, AWS, Vercel (US infrastructure)
Project management: Notion, Monday, Asana (US companies)
Accounting: some SaaS tools hosted outside Europe
Internal communication: Slack, Microsoft Teams (US companies)

Each of these tools represents a vulnerability point: legal (transfers outside the EU), operational (if the service is suspended or unilaterally modified), and strategic (your data feeds a potential competitor’s ecosystem).

The risk of service suspension is real. In 2022, Adobe suspended its services in Venezuela following US sanctions. In 2024, Russian companies lost access to their data hosted on US cloud services overnight. These precedents show that technological dependency can become a critical operational vulnerability when foreign policy changes.

Concrete Risks

Legal risk: GDPR non-compliance for data transfers outside the EU. Fines can reach 20 million euros or 4% of global annual revenue.
Geopolitical risk: a US policy change can affect access to your data or tools overnight.
Operational risk: dependency on a provider that can change its pricing, terms, or features without your agreement.
Competitive risk: public procurement tenders and large enterprises increasingly require sovereign hosting. Not being able to guarantee it excludes you from these markets.
Lock-in risk: the more you invest in a proprietary ecosystem (Google Workspace, Microsoft 365), the more costly and complex migration becomes. Lock-in intensifies over time.

French and European Initiatives

French Government Cloud Strategy

On June 12, 2025, the government structured its strategy around four pillars:

Mapping dependencies via a Digital Sovereignty Observatory
Protecting data via ANSSI’s SecNumCloud certification
Investing in the French and European ecosystem
Prioritizing open source software

Open source as a sovereignty pillar. Using open source software allows auditing code, verifying the absence of backdoors, forking projects if the maintainer changes direction, and building local expertise. The French government has made open source a strategic axis of its digital policy, with the creation of a free software and digital commons action plan.

SecNumCloud

ANSSI’s (French National Cybersecurity Agency) SecNumCloud certification verifies that cloud service providers offer the highest guarantees in security and sovereignty: data located in France, immunity from extraterritorial laws, access control, regular audits.

In December 2025, S3NS (Thales / Google Cloud joint venture) obtained SecNumCloud 3.2 certification. OVHcloud and other French providers are also certified.

Gaia-X

A Franco-German initiative launched in 2019, Gaia-X aims to create a trust framework for European data ecosystems. In November 2025, Trust Framework 3.0 “Danube” was published, providing the technical foundation for sovereign and interoperable data spaces.

Over 180 data spaces are being deployed. Cloud Temple, OVHcloud, OPIQUAD, and Seeweb are among the first services with Gaia-X Label level 3 certification.

LaSuite

LaSuite, the French government’s sovereign collaboration suite, is a concrete example of sovereignty in action: messaging, video conferencing, collaborative editing — all hosted in France, built on open source. Tchap for messaging, Webinaire for video conferencing, and several other building blocks constitute a credible alternative to US solutions for the public sector.

The Digital Markets Act (DMA)

In effect since March 2024, the DMA imposes obligations of fairness, interoperability, and non-discrimination on digital “gatekeepers” — including Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta. It’s an indirect but powerful lever for digital sovereignty: by limiting anti-competitive practices from US giants, the DMA creates space for European alternatives.

How an SMB Can Become Sovereign Concretely

Sovereignty isn’t built in a day. But it’s built brick by brick, starting with the most exposed services.

Step 1: Analytics

Replace Google Analytics with Mirage Analytics

This is often the simplest and fastest change. One snippet to replace, zero cookies, zero persistent trackers, data hosted in Europe on Scaleway. Bonus: no more cookie consent banner needed for analytics.

Deploy Cookilio as your CMP

Your consent management platform itself must be compliant and sovereign. Cookilio is hosted in Europe, compliant with CNIL recommendations, and offers refusal at the same level as acceptance.

Step 3: Web Compliance Audit

Automate auditing with Complio

Verify that your website doesn’t load undeclared third-party trackers, that your privacy policy is up to date, and that your cookies are correctly categorized. Complio does this automatically, with a European AI (Mistral).

Step 4: Hosting

Migrate to a European cloud

Scaleway, OVHcloud, Clever Cloud, Infomaniak: alternatives exist, are mature, and are competitive. Start with the most sensitive services (customer databases, confidential files).

Step 5: Collaboration Tools

Explore alternatives to Big Tech

Email: Infomaniak, ProtonMail, Mailo
Storage: Nextcloud (self-hosted or with a European provider)
Video conferencing: BigBlueButton, Jitsi
Office suite: OnlyOffice, Collabora Online
Instant messaging: Element (Matrix), Rocket.Chat
Project management: Wekan, OpenProject

Step 6: Internal Awareness

Train your teams on digital sovereignty

The technical migration isn’t enough if employees continue using Google Drive to share client files or WhatsApp to communicate sensitive information. Awareness is an often-neglected pillar of the sovereignty journey.

The Real Cost of Sovereignty

The cost argument is systematically used to justify inaction. Yet reality is more nuanced.

What Sovereignty Doesn’t Cost More

Analytics: Mirage Analytics starts at EUR 19 excl. tax/month. Google Analytics is “free” but you pay with your users’ data.
Cloud: Scaleway and OVHcloud pricing is competitive with AWS and Azure, sometimes lower for certain use cases.
Email: Infomaniak offers professional email at rates equivalent to Microsoft 365.
CMP: Cookilio is competitive with US CMPs like CookieBot (Usercentrics).

What Lack of Sovereignty Costs

GDPR compliance costs to document and govern transfers outside the EU
Risk of fines during a CNIL audit
Exclusion from public procurement or large enterprise clients requiring sovereign hosting
Strategic dependency on providers whose pricing, terms, and longevity you don’t control
Cost of emergency migration if the EU-US Data Privacy Framework is invalidated

Digital sovereignty isn’t more expensive. It’s dependency that’s expensive — you just don’t see it on the invoice.

FAQ

Is digital sovereignty compatible with SMB growth?

Absolutely. Sovereignty isn’t a brake — it’s a competitive advantage. It opens access to public procurement and large enterprise clients requiring European hosting, and it protects against legal and geopolitical risks that could block your business. Companies investing in digital sovereignty position themselves as trusted partners in a context where data protection has become a commercial selection criterion.

Can you be sovereign while still using some US tools?

Yes, provided you’ve mapped the risks and limit US tool usage to non-sensitive data. The priority is to sovereignize the most critical data: customer data, health data, financial data, analytics. For tools that don’t process personal or sensitive data, the choice can be made on other criteria (functionality, usability, cost).

Is sovereign cloud as performant as AWS or Google Cloud?

For the vast majority of SMB use cases (web hosting, databases, storage), performance is equivalent. US hyperscalers offer an advantage on very specific services (large-scale machine learning, globally distributed managed services), but these needs rarely concern SMBs. For a website, a business application, or a database, Scaleway or OVHcloud offer identical performance with often lower latency for European users.

How to convince leadership to go sovereign?

Three arguments: legal risk (GDPR fines, transfers outside the EU), commercial risk (exclusion from tenders requiring European hosting), and geopolitical risk (instability of the EU-US Data Privacy Framework). All for an equivalent or lower cost. Add the precedent of successive Safe Harbor and Privacy Shield invalidations to show this risk isn’t theoretical.

Is DPLIANCE a cloud hosting provider?

No. DPLIANCE is a sovereign Data and AI software editor. We build tools — Mirage Analytics, Cookilio, Complio — that are hosted in Europe on Scaleway. We don’t sell hosting — we integrate it into our products.

Where should I start concretely?

With analytics. Replacing Google Analytics with Mirage Analytics takes minutes, costs just EUR 19 excl. tax per month, and immediately eliminates a data transfer to the United States. It’s the quick win that kicks off the sovereignty journey.

Sources: Cigref — European cloud dependency report, French Government — Cloud strategy, Gaia-X — Trust Framework 3.0, ANSSI — SecNumCloud. Article updated March 24, 2026.