A new era of data sovereignty

Data sovereignty is increasingly becoming a boardroom priority, as more organisations assess where their data resides – and whether critical workloads should sit closer to home.

 

But what begins as a conversation about infrastructure can quickly open the door to a broader strategic debate around the nature of data itself. 

 

Should organisations consolidate all their data into a single platform for the sake of simplicity or spread their exposure among multiple vendors? And in complex IT environments spanning on-premise systems and multiple clouds, how do teams ensure data is clean, governed, and immediately available?

 

These are all important questions that are being asked by leaders everywhere. But they risk overlooking a more fundamental issue. It’s not just where data is located that is important – it’s how it moves that is critical to success. 

 

 

Data movement is as important as sovereignty

In modern enterprises, information rarely sits in one place. It flows between operational systems, analytical platforms, and cloud environments, powering everything from customer transactions to supply chains. In that context, location is only part of the equation. The real challenge is ensuring governed data reaches the right place, in the right format, and at the right time.

 

For instance, one e-commerce retailer I spoke to recently explained how they struggled to bring together the multiple systems required to complete a simple online transaction. Stock availability, customer status, delivery, invoicing, and credit checks all sat in different platforms. Without those systems talking to each other in real time, sales stalled. 

 

But by connecting those disparate systems, it enabled them to deliver a seamless retail experience that saw online revenue more than double.

 

 

Moving data in real-time needs governance

So, data mobility is important. But on its own, it is not enough. As data moves across systems, clouds, and business units, it also has to be secure, accurate, and governed in a way that ensures consistency at scale. 

 

If a change is made in one part of the organisation, that change has to propagate across the entire enterprise so that every system drawing on that information reflects the same, up-to-date view. 

 

Imagine a large car manufacturer operating an automated production line. On the surface, it might seem that it’s powered by robots. In truth, it’s the billions of data events that flow between demand planning, supply chain and scheduling platforms that do the real heavy lifting. If that data is not accurate and aligned in real time, production simply grinds to a halt. 

 

 

Cultural obstacles impede progress

It’s tempting to assume that once data is securely located, connected in real time, and properly governed, organisations are ready for whatever the world throws at them. And yet, while it may be technically possible to share data, cultural barriers can result in silos.

 

Take a bank as an example. One team may “own” the credit card data while another “manages” mortgages. Even if the systems are technically connected, there can be reluctance to make that information broadly available. 

 

Yet when a customer calls their bank, they assume the person on the other end of the phone can see the full picture. It’s not always the case. 

 

That’s why internal divisions can sometimes impede progress. And solving it requires leadership and an understanding that data should be a shared asset.

 

 

AI brings data issues into sharp focus

In many ways, every data challenge discussed so far crystallises around the race to commercialise artificial intelligence (AI). For all the excitement surrounding large language models and automation, AI is only as effective as the data that feeds it. You can build the most sophisticated model in the world, but if it is trained on incomplete, inconsistent, or inaccessible information, the results will be flawed. 

 

Sovereign infrastructure will not fix that. A locally hosted cloud or on-prem solution is of little use if the underlying data is fragmented, poorly governed, or trapped in silos. Which, again, means that the real barrier to AI is not the technology but an organisation’s ability to access, move, and trust its own data. 

 

 

Data needs to flow like electricity

If this current spike in interest in data sovereignty helps to spark a wider debate, then it may prove to be a useful catalyst rather than simply a reaction to what’s happening in the world. 

 

That’s because ultimately, the debate about how data is structured, governed and shared across an organisation should be expressed in terms that are far simpler. 

 

Data – regardless of where it’s stored – needs to work when and where it’s needed. It should behave like electricity. When you switch on a light, you expect it to work. You don’t think about the infrastructure behind it, and you shouldn’t have to.

 

The same should be true of data. The right information should be available at the moment it is needed. Organisations that achieve that will be resilient, regardless of where their infrastructure resides. 

 

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Richard Timperlake is SVP EMEA at Confluent

 

Main image courtesy of iStockPhoto.com and Eoneren