SAP Outlines New Approach to European AI and Cloud Sovereignty
SAP is advancing its plans for sovereignty in Europe with the introduction of EU AI Cloud, a unified framework designed to consolidate its previous efforts. The primary objective is straightforward: to provide organizations across Europe with greater choice and enhanced control over how they manage AI and cloud services. This new approach allows customers to select from various deployment options based on their preferences and compliance needs.
Some organizations may opt to use SAP’s own data centers, while others might prefer trusted European cloud providers. There are also those who want to keep everything managed on-site. EU AI Cloud is designed to accommodate these diverse requirements, ensuring that data remains within the European region and complies fully with EU regulations.
Strengthening AI Sovereignty Across Europe
In addition to EU AI Cloud, SAP is collaborating with Cohere to deliver new agent-style and multimodal AI tools through Cohere North. These AI models will be accessible via the SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP), offering industries with stringent data residency demands a way to integrate production-ready AI into their daily operations. The partnership aims to help enterprises gain deeper insights, enhance decision-making, and automate complex tasks, all while maintaining strict control over compliance and performance.
Cohere’s team emphasizes that their collaboration with SAP is focused on keeping advanced AI technologies available to organizations that cannot transfer data outside of Europe. This ensures that companies with strict data sovereignty requirements can still benefit from cutting-edge AI capabilities.
SAP is building EU AI Cloud with support from a broad range of European and global partners. AI models and applications from Cohere, Mistral AI, OpenAI, and others are integrated directly into SAP BTP. This integration provides customers with a clear and straightforward path to develop, deploy, and scale AI applications. Enterprises can access partner tools as Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), or Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), and decide where to run these tools—either on SAP’s infrastructure or through approved European partners.
The overall goal is to give businesses and public sector organizations access to modern AI technologies while ensuring compliance with European standards for security, data protection, and sovereignty.
Deployment Choices Aligned with Security Needs
EU AI Cloud operates via SAP Sovereign Cloud, which allows customers to choose their preferred level of control across the technology stack—from infrastructure to applications. AI models run on SAP’s cloud infrastructure and SAP BTP within European data centers, keeping operations separate from US hyperscalers and enhancing data sovereignty.
The deployment options include:
– **SAP Sovereign Cloud on SAP Cloud Infrastructure (EU):** This Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) solution is built on open-source tools and runs within SAP’s network of European data centers. It ensures that data remains inside the EU, supporting compliance with regional data protection laws.
– **SAP Sovereign Cloud On-Site:** In this option, SAP manages the infrastructure, but it is housed in a data center chosen by the customer. This setup provides the highest level of control over data, operations, and legal compliance, while still granting access to SAP’s cloud architecture.
– **Selected Hyperscalers by Market:** Some customers may continue to run SAP commercial SaaS on global cloud providers. In these cases, they can add sovereignty features tailored to regional requirements.
– **Delos Cloud:** This sovereign cloud service, based in Germany, is specifically designed for the public sector. It supports local regulations and helps government organizations modernize their digital infrastructure.
EU AI Cloud empowers European organizations with more options for running AI and cloud workloads while maintaining control over their data. The combination of flexible deployment choices, integrated partner models, and a sovereignty-focused design is intended to support companies facing strict privacy, storage, and operational oversight regulations.
For enterprises and public institutions that require AI systems tailored to local legal and regulatory demands, SAP’s new approach offers a way to leverage advanced AI tools without compromising the safeguards they depend on. This initiative marks a significant step toward reinforcing AI sovereignty across Europe.
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Source: original article.