SAP has significantly expanded its strategy for digital sovereignty and AI innovation, unveiling a broadened Sovereign Cloud portfolio that is designed to give enterprises, governments, and regulated industries new ways to balance compliance, innovation, and operational control. The company is positioning the expansion as both a European priority and a global initiative, reflecting growing demand for secure and sovereign cloud environments.
The updated portfolio introduces additional deployment options, including SAP Cloud Infrastructure, SAP Sovereign Cloud On-Site, and country-specific services such as Delos Cloud in Germany.
Each of these SAP offerings is intended to provide customers with full-stack sovereignty – spanning data, operational, technical, and legal dimensions – while still enabling access to SAP’s broader innovation ecosystem, from the Business Technology Platform to embedded AI capabilities. Customers are able to choose how and where their cloud is deployed, tailoring solutions to specific regulatory environments and security profiles without sacrificing scalability or speed.
SAP Cloud Infrastructure represents the foundation of the model within the EU, developed with open-source technologies and operated within SAP’s European data centers to ensure compliance with regional data protection laws. Delos Cloud, meanwhile, supports sovereign cloud requirements in the German public sector. The centerpiece of the expansion is SAP Sovereign Cloud On-Site, a globally available option that allows SAP to manage and operate its cloud infrastructure directly inside a customer’s own facility or a chosen data center. This model gives organizations the highest degree of physical control and data residency while maintaining full compatibility with SAP’s architecture and innovation roadmap.
Thomas Saueressig, Member of the Executive Board of SAP SE for Customer Services & Delivery, described the expansion as critical to Europe’s future role in AI and digital transformation, stressing that sovereignty must underpin the region’s ability to apply AI to specialized industry use cases. Martin Merz, President of SAP Sovereign Cloud, characterized sovereignty as the key to Europe’s digital resilience, noting that scalable and future-ready frameworks are increasingly essential as organizations modernize. Deloitte Partner Stephen Glynn added that sovereign cloud solutions are rapidly shifting from optional to essential, particularly in public-sector and regulated industries.
Deployment Models
SAP emphasizes that the Sovereign Cloud initiative is not tied to a single deployment model but instead designed as a spectrum of options, ranging from SAP-hosted services to customer-owned sites and even hyperscaler-based models where appropriate. This flexible framework reflects customer demand for greater control over sensitive data and infrastructure, particularly as regulatory scrutiny intensifies and digital transformation accelerates.
The company has outlined four core capabilities at the center of its sovereign cloud approach: data sovereignty, which ensures customer ownership and regulatory compliance; operational sovereignty, which provides transparency and oversight through SAP-managed environments; technical sovereignty, which gives customers the freedom to run workloads on the infrastructure that best fits their requirements; and legal sovereignty, which ensures alignment with regional legal frameworks and accountability standards.
In practical terms, these capabilities allow organizations to run critical workloads such as the SAP Business Suite in sovereign environments, while still benefitting from continuous innovation cycles. This includes integration with SAP Business Technology Platform and SAP Business AI, ensuring that sovereignty does not come at the expense of speed or depth of innovation. By anchoring sovereignty into the core of its cloud strategy, SAP aims to provide the compliance assurance that regulated industries require while also supporting the rapid deployment of next-generation AI applications.
SAP has pledged more than €20 billion in long-term investment to strengthen Europe’s digital autonomy, underscoring the company’s determination to support regional resilience with secure, regulation-compliant solutions. The expansion of the Sovereign Cloud portfolio is already being rolled out across multiple countries, supported by hundreds of localized delivery experts and a wide array of certifications to meet regional standards. The global availability of the On-Site model signals that SAP is extending these sovereignty principles beyond Europe, aiming to serve international markets where regulatory and operational needs also demand localized control.
For SAP, the expansion reflects a broader shift in how cloud services are delivered and consumed. Customers increasingly expect not only technological innovation but also assurance that their sovereignty requirements can be met without compromise. By embedding sovereignty into infrastructure, operations, and legal frameworks, SAP is offering customers both flexibility and assurance in an era defined by AI-driven transformation, regulatory complexity, and the pressing need for digital resilience.
