Sovereign Cloud France: Concept and Outlook | UltraEdge
The sovereign cloud and data centers based in France are strategic priorities for France, particularly in a context where American hyperscalers dominate and risks related to compliance with European regulations like RGPD and NIS 2 exist. The sovereign cloud is emerging as a credible alternative. This approach aims to strengthen digital independence while protecting the sensitive data of organizations in France. The year 2025 is also the focus of new government initiatives as part of France 2030.
Understanding the concept of sovereign cloud
Definition and characteristics
Sovereign cloud refers to a model of IT service infrastructure deployed on the cloud operating exclusively under the jurisdiction of a country or group of countries, providing maximum protection against foreign interference. This approach goes far beyond the mere geographical location of data.
In the value chain, it encompasses regulatory compliance and protection from laws outside the target country, while ensuring ownership of infrastructure with national data center operators or hosting providers.
The idea of applying the concept of national sovereignty to the cloud emerged with Information Note No. 2016/004 of April 5, 2016, on cloud computing. This approach ensures complete control by national authorities over stored and processed data.
Unlike a “traditional” cloud, where location is irrelevant, the sovereign cloud allows for territorial and legal control, which maximizes its value proposition.
SecNumCloud certification, issued by ANSSI, is the French benchmark for qualifying sovereign cloud services. In the summer of 2023, the government announced its “Cloud at the center” doctrine, which requires government digital services to be hosted on a cloud qualified by ANSSI as SecNumCloud. This qualification guarantees excellent IT sanity and protection in line with European law.
The sovereign cloud is emerging as a response to growing concerns about data security and dependence on foreign providers for online storage. By adopting this targeted approach to the sovereign cloud, governments and businesses are seeking to ensure the protection of their most sensitive data.
Public, private, and sovereign cloud: what are the differences?
The main distinction between the three approaches lies in the levels of monitoring and security. While the public cloud vs private cloud have more than notable differences, the sovereign cloud allows them to be overcome.
While the public cloud optimizes the sharing of resources between different customers, the private cloud isolates different environments. The sovereign cloud adds a dual geopolitical, security, and regulatory dimension.
American hyperscalers such as Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud have a significant share of the international market, but remain subject to the Cloud Act, which applies in the United States.
The Cloud Act authorizes access to sensitive data stored by these players, even when hosted in Europe. In this respect, the sovereign cloud ensures that data is solely under the jurisdiction of the target country.
Adopting a sovereign cloud
Safeguarding sensitive and strategic data
Highly sophisticated data protection, with a strong territorial approach, is the key challenge when it comes to adopting a sovereign cloud.
By 2028, the total amount of information and transfers is expected to reach 394 zettabytes of data, And among this data, a significant amount has a major impact on organizations. Strategic sectors with high confidentiality requirements, such as healthcare, defense, energy, and FinTech, can benefit from these highly-targeted protection guarantees.
When foreign players such as China's Alibaba with its cloud computing subsidiary or Microsoft can host sensitive data, the question arises as to the sovereignty of that data. This explains the growth of the cloud and sovereign data centers, which offer concrete alternatives for keeping the most critical information under strict national control.
Advanced encryption, network segmentation with proactive monitoring, anti-intrusion mechanisms, and enhanced access controls are key features of these sovereign hosting solutions. Sovereign cloud solutions are a further step forward for cybersecurity at the national level.
Strengthening technological independence
The autonomy of tech players is a key issue in maintaining the competitiveness of national champions. The often highly pronounced dependence on external players in the host country can create structural vulnerabilities and consequently affect the ability of national companies to innovate. In this regard, the sovereign cloud contributes to the local technological ecosystem, which potentially increases the emergence of one or more French players capable of competing and establishing themselves in larger geographical areas.
In April 2025, Clara Chappaz, Minister Delegate for Digital Affairs and Artificial Intelligence, stated that “France, like Europe, is currently dependent on cloud providers that capture between 70% and 80% of the European market.” The aim is to relaunch the sovereign cloud project, in line with France's desire for greater technological independence.
The France 2030 mission, with a budget of €3 billion, saw the launch in April 2024 of the PEPR Cloud (Priority Research Program and Equipment). It aims to develop a comprehensive sovereign architecture and co-build fast-growing software building blocks, with applications related to smart cities, the industry of the future, telehealth with the IoT, and augmented reality.
Data centers such as UltraEdge are helping to promote this vision by supporting users in their transition to next-generation tools.
Ensuring compliance with local regulatory frameworks
Regulatory compliance is a challenge for stakeholders in an increasingly complex legal environment. With the GDPR, sector-specific certifications such as HDS in the healthcare sector, and the adoption of the NIS 2 cybersecurity directive, the constraints on data processing and protection are becoming stricter.
With the contribution of the sovereign cloud or a national data center host such as UltraEdge, this compliance is maximized because the requirements have been anticipated from the design phase. With the contribution of the sovereign cloud or a national data center host such as UltraEdge, this compliance is maximized because the requirements were anticipated at the very design stage.
This avoids any risk of regulatory sanctions in the event of non-compliance. Full traceability of access and processing, as required by these entities, becomes much easier to integrate into your ecosystem. As a preventive measure, the sovereign cloud drastically reduces the financial risks in the event of a data breach, as imposed by national jurisdictions.
What can you expect from asovereign cloud in tangible terms?
Data hosted locally
Hosting data solely within national borders is a key foundation of sovereign cloud computing.
For any organization for which data sovereignty is a major issue, they benefit from servers that are as close as possible, at the national level and even regionally in some cases. Localization allows for the exclusive application of French law and compliance with European directives, which prevents the risk of exposure to external legislation. Local redundancy remains accessible, even with equipment sovereignty.
French cloud hosting providers and data centers deploy multi-site architectures, both nationally and across Europe. A concrete advantage in three words: availability, elasticity, and scalability! All while maintaining complete control over data location.
Encryption and access sovereignty
A hosting solution with sovereign cloud computing incorporates advanced encryption mechanisms. These are managed exclusively via encryption keys by national entities. This prevents any offshore entity, such as an underlying technology provider, from accessing data without encryption. Digital sovereignty is thus extended to the most technical layers of the infrastructure.
The most advanced security standards are met through the integration of authentication and authorization protocols set up in advance by the sovereign hosting provider. This increased transparency simplifies security audits and speeds up regulatory compliance checks. Segmentation of the network infrastructure and its isolation creates a completely closed environment for optimal security of critical and highly sensitive data.
Local support, traceability, and dedicated supervision
100% local support is a major advantage of the sovereign cloud in France. When support teams interact in the same language—which is the case at UltraEdge—and all local regulatory issues are understood, prompt intervention is facilitated in the case of an incident. The dual cultural and geographical proximity simplifies contractual relationships and improves customer satisfaction in terms of perceived quality.
Real-time supervision of infrastructure is carried out from French control centers, with teams authorized according to the required security levels.
In addition, this organization greatly facilitates responsiveness within the same time slot and a detailed understanding of business constraints. Not to mention that the high level of traceability of operations facilitates any investigations that may be necessary and satisfies the requirements of the most sophisticated security audits.
Compatibility with SecNumCloud, GDPR, and HDS standards
Native compliance with French and European standards sets the sovereign cloud apart from international solutions. The ANSSI's SecNumCloud scope imposes complex technical and organizational requirements that few players can master from start to finish.
Aligning with the GDPR becomes much simpler with European and French hosting, with compliant practices from the very start of the collaboration. A multi-certification approach, with sector-specific certifications such as HDS applied to healthcare institutions, is a major asset in terms of data governance.
Network isolation and controlled interconnection
The sovereign cloud network architecture favors a siloed approach and complete control over data flows. Reducing the risk of interception and potential data breaches, as well as maximizing communication performance, is facilitated by national exchange points. This approach, implemented by UltraEdge with its dense network of 250 data centers, including 7 IX data centers, contrasts with the highly fragmented architectures of hyperscalers, which multiply national authorities for data transfer.
Finally, any risk of external surveillance and misappropriation is minimized because connectivity is ultra-segmented between the sovereign host, which uses operator networks in France. The communication chain is completely controlled, while boosting data confidentiality and improving the performance of the most sensitive applications and services.
Top 3 concrete challenges to anticipate
Multiple challenges for the sovereign cloud have been identified in response to the growing challenges of digital sovereignty, data security, and economic competitiveness in a global context that is increasingly dependent on digital infrastructure. Three concrete challenges are to be anticipated.
1. Implementation costs and limited pooling
The main question surrounding sovereign cloud computing concerns its economic model. Economies of scale are potentially limited in the absence of pooling on a global scale. Price competitiveness can therefore be a barrier to adoption. And sometimes it is difficult to obtain a price list; this lack of price transparency can make it difficult for potential customers to assess the total integration cost.
As more significant amortization is required to benefit from a national infrastructure, this may be reflected in the prices. Nevertheless, this approach is debatable, as an in-depth analysis can be conducted to identify any hidden or indirect costs of global hyperscale solutions. Questions such as the following should be asked: What are the regulatory risks? What are the compliance costs? What is the potential exposure to geopolitical fluctuations? An underestimated return on investment that does not take these qualitative data into account should therefore not be overlooked!
2. Interoperability with existing clouds
One technical challenge is coexistence with existing infrastructure and cloud infrastructure already installed. Many organizations have hybrid and multi-cloud hosting solutions with American hyperscalers. Preserving previous investments while migrating to the cloud or a sovereign host is a serious issue.
APIs and protocols facilitate interoperability. However, they require a hybrid architecture, which is inevitably more complex. This requires rare technical skills, which we have at UltraEdge, to carefully plan the migration and avoid any malfunctions such as service interruptions.
3. Maintaining performance and scalability
There can be no compromise on performance requirements, even when sovereignty is at stake. Critical applications are expected to have minimal or even zero response times and the ability to react instantly to peak loads. In this respect, a sovereign cloud or hosting solution must prove its performance in comparison with global leaders, who have a much more comprehensive infrastructure.
Technological integration and the micro services available in Edge data centers enable the development of innovative solutions incorporating the latest advances in AI, IoT, etc.
The innovation provided can partly justify the price premium associated with a sovereign cloud.
French initiatives
On April 14, 2025, Clara Chappaz, Minister Delegate for Digital Affairs, officially relaunched a project that has become emblematic of France's desire for technological independence: the sovereign cloud. This initiative is part of France 2030, the national investment program with a budget of €54 billion over five years. The emphasis on technological sovereignty remains a priority.
Funded to the tune of €51 million over seven years, the PEPR Cloud program is co-led by Inria (the French National Institute for Research in Computer Science) and the CEA (the French Atomic Energy Commission). The work focuses on the development of a distributed architecture, interoperable management tools, and security mechanisms that comply with the most demanding standards.
At the same time, a Digital Sovereignty Observatory will be created to map French technological dependencies. This initiative aims to identify precisely where vulnerabilities lie and to direct future investment towards critical areas. The Minister Delegate for Digital Affairs, Clara Chappaz, stated that: “Digital sovereignty is a common cause. It commits the State, businesses, and citizens to building a stronger, freer, and more sovereign digital Europe”.
Sovereign cloud prospects with UltraEdge
UltraEdge has established a long-term position in the sovereign hosting segment, drawing on its extensive expertise in edge infrastructure and reinforced by its pragmatic approach to digital sovereignty. Our ultra-dense network strategy, with 250 data centers, combines local presence and proximity with sovereignty requirements, creating a high value-added proposition for our various partners in France.
UltraEdge thus provides a precise response to latency issues and maximizes cloud hosting performance. By providing both legal and technical management, it reconciles the imperatives of high performance with digital sovereignty. Our differentiated approach is therefore a growth lever in the face of global hyperscaler solutions.
Furthermore, given the risks associated with compliance with European and French regulations, such as the GDPR and NIS 2, sovereign hosting is a long-term alternative. The UltraEdge approach, with solutions fully adapted to national specificities and densely distributed edge data centers, combines technological innovation with sovereignty requirements.