Red Hat’s commitments for sovereign cloud: Your cloud, your rules

In today’s digital world, sovereignty is paramount. Heightened concerns surrounding the control and security of digital assets, data, operations, technology, and supply chains are driving organizations to reassess their strategies and seek greater independence and autonomy. This is particularly critical for entities overseeing vital infrastructure, such as public sector organizations, healthcare providers, utilities, and financial services firms, who require the assurance that sensitive data and essential services adhere to local laws and are shielded from interference or disruption. As a result, sovereign cloud and digital sovereignty have evolved from mere compliance requirements to fundamental business imperatives, enhancing resilience and adaptability.

Red Hat, the world’s leading provider of enterprise open source solutions, empowers organizations to achieve true digital sovereignty through a bedrock of open source and the flexibility of hybrid cloud. Our commitments are centered on providing customers with the control, trust, and resilience they need in a sovereign environment:

1. To provide a foundation of transparency and trust with open source software;
2. To empower control and choice with a flexible open hybrid cloud approach;
3. To enable robust protection, operational resilience and stability of critical infrastructure;
4. To continue to build and collaborate with a strong ecosystem of local partners; and
5. To unlock the future of sovereign AI workloads.

Let’s look at each of these commitments. 

1. Our commitment: To provide a foundation of transparency and trust with open source software

Red Hat’s open source development model, fueled by community collaboration and rigorous scrutiny, optimizes a resilient and transparent software foundation essential for sovereign environments. Open source is the linchpin of digital sovereignty, offering  transparency that proprietary solutions often lack, all while fostering continuous innovation. This inherent transparency cultivates robust security practices, facilitates regulatory compliance, builds trust, and streamlines audit processes. 

Our commitment: Red Hat delivers on the promise of open source transparency with enterprise-grade hardening, proactive lifecycle management, and responsive support, empowering organizations with the autonomy and resilience vital for sovereign operations.

Red Hat’s deep open source roots cultivate a trusted supply chain, actively mitigating risks through secure development practices, strong build processes, robust packaging, and transparent distribution, complemented by continuous monitoring and verification. Initiatives like Sigstore and Red Hat Trusted Application Pipeline underscore this commitment. Our investments in Sigstore, for example, underscore our commitment to providing our customers and partners tamper-resistant, digitally signed software, with clear software provenance. Embracing open source solutions is a strategic imperative for organizations seeking true technological autonomy and long-term viability of their sovereign cloud initiatives. 

2. Our commitment: To empower control and choice with a flexible open hybrid cloud approach

Red Hat’s flexible deployment model breaks down barriers for organizations navigating sovereignty-driven markets, offering unprecedented choice and control. Our open hybrid cloud approach liberates organizations with the power to deploy any application, any workload, anywhere — from their own data centers to sovereign clouds to the intelligent edge. At its core, Red Hat’s approach champions choice and control for our customers, offering consistency across diverse cloud environments. 

Our commitment: Whether in on-premises data centers or cloud, customers can use Red Hat software in the venue of their choice. This inherent flexibility empowers organizations to maintain resolute control over their data, operations and technology. 

For C-level executives, a hybrid or multicloud strategy isn’t just advisable, it is a strategic necessity to mitigate single-vendor risks, future-proof investments against vendor lock-in, and firmly control the location of critical infrastructure, workloads, and data. Red Hat’s platforms are architected for multicloud deployments, addressing critical operational and data residency requirements. The portability of workloads on our open hybrid cloud platform offers even more assurance, enabling organizations to easily and rapidly migrate workloads across different cloud providers or their own on-premises environments, allowing for swift responses to evolving sovereign requirements and operational resilience. And, using Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform, this migration and environment reprovisioning can be automated, offering even greater agility and control. By deploying Red Hat software across their infrastructure, local cloud providers, or trusted partner environments, organizations can gain the agility to select the precise technologies needed to meet their unique sovereign requirements, with the added assurance of workload portability and system interoperability. 

3. Our commitment: To enable robust protection and operational stability of critical infrastructure

Red Hat technologies are fundamental to bolstering digital sovereignty, enabling data availability and the stability of critical infrastructure, directly addressing regulations such as the EU’s Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) or Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions (OSFI) regulations in Canada. And, Red Hat provides cryptographically signed software with verified provenance, architected to enable customers to comply with recently adopted regulations like the Cyber Resilience Act (CRA).

Our commitment: To support customers in implementing sovereign strategies, fortifying security, and enhancing organizational resilience. Together, Red Hat’s open hybrid cloud portfolio combined with our partner ecosystem’s deep expertise, delivers the adaptability and flexibility needed for robust sovereign solutions. This helps customers to fortify core infrastructure, strengthen business continuity capabilities, and reinforce the software supply chain, collectively amplifying organizational resilience. 

4. Our commitment: To continue to build and collaborate with a strong ecosystem of local partners

Strategic partnerships are essential to the success of sovereign cloud strategies. Red Hat has cultivated strong, successful collaborations with a vibrant ecosystem of local cloud providers worldwide, a testament to our commitment to regional expertise.

Our commitment: Red Hat is actively expanding and deepening our ecosystem of local and regional partners, further empowering our customers with an even broader spectrum of sovereign cloud options. 

True sovereignty transcends mere data residency; it demands customer control over both operations and underlying technology. Red Hat’s solutions empower core sovereign capabilities, including:

• Infrastructure: Full control over compute, storage, and network resources, utilizing domestic infrastructure, while maintaining resilience through local availability zones.
• Operations: Autonomy over the operation, management, and support of the environment.
• Technology: Access to, and control over, source code being developed by broad communities that reduce the risk of dependence on a single vendor.
• Assurance: Ability to independently verify the integrity, security, and compliance of the environment based on domestic rules, policies, and frameworks.

Regional cloud providers, with their localized data centers and deep-rooted relationships within sensitive sectors, are important partners in aligning Red Hat’s offerings with stringent sovereign cloud requirements. Red Hat remains steadfast in its commitment to collaborating with partners, offering an unbiased foundation for sovereign solutions. This close collaboration empowers local system integrators and independent software vendors (ISVs) to craft services and solutions tailored to regional imperatives. The powerful combination of Red Hat’s open hybrid cloud platforms and our partners’ deep expertise is fundamental to delivering cloud-like experiences with sovereign environments. 

5. Our commitment: To unlock the future of sovereign AI workloads

The future of AI is linked to the principles of data, operational and technological sovereignty. Deploying AI platforms on dedicated infrastructure, whether on-premises or within sovereign cloud environments, provides a critical layer of control and addresses key sovereignty imperatives. 

Our commitment: Red Hat’s platforms are prepared to navigate your sovereignty requirements, providing essential tools and architectures that empower customers to maintain control, meet rigorous security standards, and deploy AI workloads in alignment with your specific governance policies, or your compliance with regulations like the EU’s AI Act or the guidance provided by Singapore's Model AI Governance Framework for Generative AI. 

A strategic imperative

Digital sovereignty transcends compliance. It is about empowerment, equipping organizations and nations with the autonomy to make informed, independent decisions shaping their digital destiny. An advanced digital sovereignty approach also helps companies further contribute upstream and collaborate with a community of millions of worldwide contributors, users, and developers who are driving open source innovation. With our robust open source roots, agile open hybrid cloud portfolio strategy, thriving partner ecosystem, and focus on delivering control and transparency, Red Hat is committed to helping customers navigate the intricacies of sovereign cloud and achieving the operational resilience and digital sovereignty crucial for sustained success in today’s dynamic global landscape.