Leadership Compass

This is a new Leadership Compass topic for us. To see what Mike has previously written about this topic, please click here.

To achieve EU sovereignty, ownership, physical infrastructure, support personnel, and cloud operations must be in the EU and subject to EU laws. There must be no administrative access, overriding ownership, or control rights held by non-EU entities that could create exposure to foreign legislation such as the U.S. CLOUD Act. The cloud provider must ensure that the residency of customers’ data is strictly enforced, that encryption keys are generated and controlled within EU borders, and that management operations are performed exclusively by EU-based personnel.

To qualify for inclusion in this Leadership Compass, vendors must demonstrate not only the breadth of their IaaS service coverage but also the depth of their services for sector-specific markets such as finance, healthcare, manufacturing and public sector use cases. Both breadth and depth of capabilities will be reflected in the rating, but also the spider charts that emphasize specific capability areas and thus show the specialization of vendors and their products to provide a fair rating for specialist vendors.

Inclusion Criteria

Solutions must:

  • Provide an IaaS within the European Union that is fully subject to EU laws and regulations.
    • The service must provide a standardized, productized IaaS cloud offering
    • The service must be capable of being consumed from infrastructure based in the EU/EEA
    • The service must include service centers and support staff based in the EU/EEA

Exclusion Criteria

Solutions will be excluded if:

  • The vendor only provides managed services without any infrastructure
  • The vendor only provides hosting services without a cloud-enabled infrastructure
How to Book a Briefing
  1. Go to the KuppingerCole Booking tool webpage.
  2. Under Select a Service, select Leadership Compass Briefing 55 mins.
  3. Under Select Staff, scroll down and select Mike Small
  4. Choose date and time between January 4 - 29th, 2027 that are convenient for your team. Please note: Times will be shown in your time zone.
  5. You will receive an MS Teams invite that you can forward along to others in your company. Alternatively, you can use this as a placeholder and send us an invite with another app.
  6. Please prepare a slide deck and provide it to the analyst

Recommended Briefing Structure:

Company and Product Context (5 minutes)

  • Brief company overview and positioning in the EI Sovereign IaaS market
  • Product scope and major components relevant to this Leadership Compass
  • Primary customer profiles and deployment scenarios

Product Overview (10 minutes)

Please structure this section explicitly around the evaluation categories below. We do not expect every solution to cover all capabilities, so please focus on those you do support. You do not need to cover every feature exhaustively, but clarity and technical depth are essential.:

  • Service Breadth (IaaS services provided)
  • Technology Depth (the depth and specializations of the IaaS services provided including AI)
  • Industry Depth (the market sectors which your service supports)
  • Complementary User Entity Controls (for the user to secure their use of the service)
  • Openness (the extent that the service supports open standards)
  • Outbound migration (how easily a customer can exit from your service and retain their setting and data)
  • EU Sovereignty (the ways in which your service supports physical, operational and jurisdictional EU sovereignty)

Demonstration (30 minutes)

The demo can be live, video, or canned, although the analyst would like to be walked through the demo, so he understands the products key capabilities including dashboards.

  • Cloud provisioning and lifecycle management (demonstrate the management console, APIs, Infrastructure as Code and automation capabilities.)
  • Cloud-native services and integration (demonstrate managed Kubernetes, container deployment, managed databases, object storage, load balancing, and integration with CI/CD pipelines. Show how these services are managed consistently through APIs and automation.
  • Security and identity management (Demonstrate IAM, role-based access control, MFA, encryption and key management, network security policies, audit logging, and integration with external identity providers.)
  • Resilience, availability, and disaster recovery (Demonstrate availability zones, automated failover, backup and restore, replication, recovery procedures, and monitoring of service health. Explain the supported RPO/RTO and associated SLAs.)
  • Sovereignty and operational control (Demonstrate the data, operational, physical and jurisdictional sovereignty controls)

Differentiation and Roadmap (5minutes)

  • Clear articulation of what differentiates your platform from peers.
  • Near-term roadmap priorities relevant to cloud security
  • Known limitations or trade-offs (openness is appreciated and expected)

Wrap Up and Q&A

  • Reference customers, deployments, or representative use cases
  • Time for clarification questions and discussion
Your Benefits of Participation

Benefit from Third-Party Attestation

Receive an objective evaluation of your solution that you can easily integrate into your marketing strategy. Our vendor neutral approach ensures results are trustworthy and credible. Use this assessment as a powerful marketing asset to enhance customer trust.

Increase Brand Awareness

Share your cybersecurity expertise with the world. By participating in our analysis, you gain a platform to spotlight your company. Boost your visibility and establish yourself as a leading provider in the industry. If you take part in this Leadership Compass, your company will be featured in our Vendor Catalog at no cost to you.

Get Insights Into Competing Solutions

Discover how your solution compares with others in the industry. Our analysis provides insights not only into your solution but also valuable information about competitors. Utilize this knowledge to strengthen your position in the market.

Gain Valuable Insights on Your Market Standing

Benefit from a thorough, complimentary evaluation of your solution. KuppingerCole Analysts will evaluate not only your product but also your positioning in the market. Seize this opportunity to receive valuable feedback and make your solution even more effective.

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