Emma Dennard, VP Northern Europe at OVHcloud, believes that 2026 will see organisations planning migrations within the wake of safety and sovereignty issues – but in addition sturdy development within the business from the AI revolution
In 2025, geopolitics entered the boardroom. In 2026, we’ll begin to see the actual penalties.
Within the wake of ‘Liberation Day’ – and the sovereignty debates it accelerated – we’ll begin to see firms take concrete motion. Migration is advanced, so change gained’t be on the spot, however 2026 will carry early indicators of motion. AI will proceed to gasoline knowledge centre development, and its dependence on cloud infrastructure means sovereignty concerns will more and more form the place AI workloads run.
Nonetheless, earlier than we have a look at the implications for 2026, we have to have a look at what ‘sovereignty’ actually means.
Safety and freedom
It’s simpler to consider sovereignty in two classes: safety and freedom. It’s all the time been necessary for know-how professionals to have selection over suppliers from each a {hardware} and software program viewpoint, to have the correct redundant community and energy preparations – and necessary for companies to have the liberty to decide on the place knowledge is and who handles it.
Clearly, this overlaps with safety points: the headquarters of the internet hosting firm impacts the legal guidelines that apply to the information, which might pose a safety danger – and in lots of circumstances, some suppliers use knowledge saved within the cloud for AI coaching. On the similar time, completely different suppliers and areas have completely different approaches to cybersecurity. Finally, sovereignty is about freedom, management and safety. With that out of the best way, what does this imply for 2026?
Migration and planning
The know-how business is an enormously advanced system, and any change takes time. Regardless that discussions round sovereignty points peaked in April 2025, and have highlighted some extremely necessary points, the subject continues to be too current to see any sudden migrations.
However make no mistake: know-how professionals are planning. The discussions have prompted a wave of contemplating and reconsidering methods for knowledge administration and lots of groups have been mapping knowledge towards its wants and sensitivities. Some knowledge might be in a hyperscale cloud, for instance, however some shouldn’t be! In 2026, we’ll begin to see extra migrations, notably since many investigations have discovered that some technologists don’t have clear visibility on the place their knowledge is within the first place.
Motion concerns
As everyone knows, migrations might be tough, intensive processes, however in addition they have silver linings. In 2026, companies will realise that transferring knowledge might be enormously useful from a value, management and safety perspective, and within the longer-term, it is smart to make sure that knowledge is inherently moveable. With the final maturity of techniques like Kubernetes, we are going to proceed to see elevated adoption of each cloud-native applied sciences and open-source platforms that make workload portability simpler.
Nonetheless, there are some restrictions to transferring knowledge, particularly unfair practices like lock-in, egress charges and technical dependencies like sure purposes solely working – or working higher – on particular cloud platforms. We welcome the work of regulators such because the Competitors and Markets Authority to enhance competitors within the cloud market, cut back unfair boundaries, and make workload portability extra sensible.
Finally, IT migrations are lengthy and complicated processes, and no two cloud suppliers have precisely the identical setup. However it may be achieved and it’s being achieved each day. In 2026, we’ll see extra organisations utilizing both European gamers or on-prem techniques for delicate knowledge and a mixture of hyperscalers and native suppliers for non-sensitive knowledge.
What about AI?
Knowledge centre professionals have been considerably affected by AI: in 2025, round half of cloud’s development was due to AI. We’re seeing extra knowledge centres – and particularly AI knowledge centres – being constructed due to this potential, and new GPUaaS suppliers bobbing up.
That is making a stronger, extra various knowledge centre ecosystem. And whereas there are issues about an AI bubble, the tech sector is way extra strong than it was in the course of the dotcom period. Progress ought to proceed all through 2026, though rising part costs will stay a constraint.
Total, 2026 can be a demanding yr for the information centre ecosystem, however a constructive one. The persevering with and accelerating want for AI and cloud – and extra particularly, completely different clouds – will imply a extra various knowledge centre business all over the world. Sovereignty discussions will end in higher want for extra native cloud suppliers, and AI’s success will drive extra knowledge centre development.
This text is a part of our DCR Predicts 2026 collection. Verify again each day this week for a brand new prediction, as we rely down the ultimate days of January.
