New research from UK sovereign cloud provider Civo, drawing on a survey of 1,000 UK IT leaders, finds that digital sovereignty has shifted from compliance concern to board-level risk. Seventy-three per cent of UK organisations now treat it as a strategic priority, up 12 points from last year, while 64 per cent say continued reliance on a small number of global cloud providers is unsustainable.
The numbers that reveal the structural problem: the share of organisations expecting to become more deeply entrenched in US hyperscalers' systems has more than doubled over the past year, from 12 per cent to 28 per cent, at the same time as the proportion wanting to leave is rising. Successful migration to a domestic alternative has stalled at 15 per cent. Only one in four UK firms believes it could fully exit a major US cloud provider.
The research gives that impasse a cost. In the past year, 39 per cent of UK IT leaders experienced outages originating from US hyperscalers, with 15 per cent hit on multiple occasions. Among those affected, 29 per cent reported a direct financial cost; 40 per cent said their cloud dependency risk exposure exceeded £50,000; and 5 per cent put the figure above £1 million.
"UK leaders clearly want to break free from Big Tech dependency, but find themselves trapped by an ever-tightening web," said Mark Boost, CEO of Civo. "This is not a proactive investment or deliberate strategy. It is a symptom of organisations becoming increasingly ensnared in the same hyperscaler ecosystems they acknowledge to be a significant long-term risk."
AI adoption is sharpening the question. Fifty-eight per cent of respondents are concerned about their AI provider's legal jurisdiction, and 43 per cent say AI workloads specifically must sit within UK jurisdiction. Boost framed this as a shift from storage compliance to architectural control: "AI has raised the stakes for digital sovereignty. The issue is no longer just where data is stored, but also where systems are built, who controls the infrastructure and which legal jurisdiction it falls under. The UK must control the infrastructure on which AI is built to ensure long-term competitiveness in the field."
The report notes this regulatory context: Ofcom's investigation into the cloud computing market and the designation of Strategic Market Status for Microsoft. Ninety per cent of UK firms surveyed are calling for a more proactive government approach to supporting domestic cloud technology, up from 60 per cent last year. The survey is Civo's second annual edition; the company has a commercial interest in the case for UK sovereign cloud.
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