GCP – How European customers benefit today from the power of choice with Google Sovereign Cloud

At Google, we have always believed in the power of choice in how we build and make our technology available to our customers. The power of choice becomes even more critical for organizations to meet constantly evolving digital sovereignty requirements while accelerating and optimizing their move to the cloud. 

This is where Google Sovereign Cloud gives you an advantage. Our comprehensive set of sovereign capabilities allows organizations to adopt the right controls on a per-workload basis to meet their sovereignty requirements, while optimizing for considerations like regional and industry-specific regulations, infrastructure platform choice (public or distributed cloud), functionality, cost, infrastructure consistency, and developer experience.

Google invests significantly in the advancement of security — we are secure by design, secure by default. Read on for a deeper perspective and customer examples that bring this to life from our regulated and trusted cloud expert,Archana Ramamoorthy. 

Tara Brady, President, Google Cloud EMEA

Our collaboration with customers, local sovereign partners, governments, and regulators has grown since we started our “Cloud. On Europe’s Terms” initiative almost three years ago. We have built domestic partnerships in Germany, France, Spain, Italy, and Luxembourg. We also operate across many local entities in the EU, including Google Cloud EMEA, serving much of the EU, and our most recently announced Google Cloud Public Sector Deutschland. We’ve designed these operations to provide the specialized, regional tools and resources that organizations in the EU need to accelerate their own digital transformation, meet public sector requirements, and support critical workloads. We continue to deliver new capabilities that allow organizations to address sensitive use cases, such as maintaining sovereign control over AI workloads while remaining aligned with their risk appetite and compliance needs. 

Latest collaborations and use cases

The University Medical Center Schleswig-Holstein (UKSH) is the second largest university hospital in Germany, serving more than a half a million patients per year. UKSH is excited to use Sovereign Controls managed by our partner T-Systems to help meet strict German requirements for data protection, data residency, and security. Through our pioneering External Key Management (EKM) solution, keys used to encrypt patient data will be held in T-Systems’ German data centers, outside of Google Cloud’s infrastructure. In addition to managing encryption keys, T-Systems is also responsible for training staff, implementing the services, and structuring the data that is transferred from many systems in the clinic. 

MeinAuto is a leading online car retailer, providing customers access to car subscriptions via an end-to-end online journey. They chose Google’s Sovereign Cloud, to accelerate their digital transformation while enhancing the protection of their customers’ personal data. By taking advantage of Sovereign Controls by T-Systems, MeinAuto is able to set new standards in the automotive industry for customer experience while meeting data protection requirements.

New generally available Sovereign Controls by Partners

Like these two examples, many organizations have expressed that they are keen to work with trusted local partners who can provide additional assurance and oversight for their cloud workloads. We are excited to announce that Sovereign Controls by SIA/Minsait is now generally available to organizations in Spain. 

“The offering gives organizations final control over the encryption of data and provides a higher level of autonomy and data sovereignty. Furthermore, the collaboration between Minsait and Google Cloud will help customers make the most of the intrinsic advantages of the public cloud, enhancing their competitiveness with the most advanced data protection measures available and aligned with organizational and regulatory needs,” said Roberto Espina, CEO, SIA. 

Sovereign Controls by SIA/Minsait joins generally available Sovereign Controls by Partners offerings for Google Sovereign Cloud including Sovereign Controls by T-Systems in Germany and Local Controls by S3NS in France, and our preview offering of Sovereign Controls by PSN in Italy.  

Expanded Regional Controls at no additional cost 

Software-based controls on public cloud infrastructure are foundational to Google Sovereign Cloud. Regional Controls allow organizations to enforce core controls such as data residency for customer content, offer administrative access transparency and approval, restrict non-compliant services, monitor the controlled environment for compliance violations, and optionally implement customer-managed encryption. 

The new Regional Controls package, available at no additional cost, is currently in preview in 32 cloud regions across 14 countries, including Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. 

Applying controls on Google Cloud allows customers to meet sovereignty requirements while preserving access to Google Cloud’s innovative services with broad scale and elasticity. This is particularly important for AI services requiring specialized hardware; customers can seamlessly leverage our AI infrastructure that is part of our global public cloud.

Addressing current and future requirements in France

Google Cloud opened our Paris region in 2022. Our joint venture with S3NS — a Thales subsidiary — to build a trusted cloud in France has been providing Local Controls by S3NS, an offering which delivers data residency in France, management of encryption keys outside of Google’s infrastructure, and additional operational oversight since January of 2023. These offerings have already helped many French organizations accelerate their move to the cloud.  

The ambition of S3NS has always been to obtain the SecNumCloud label, the certification required by the French government to serve “Operators of Vital Importance” in accordance with France’s national cloud strategy. S3NS recently shared publicly aiming to start the process for SecNumCloud certification in June 2024, with further aims to onboard early adopters to the Trusted Cloud product offering by the end of the year.

Enabling AI anywhere with Google Distributed Cloud

Google Distributed Cloud (GDC) brings a fully managed hardware and software solution, and the choice of running connected to Google Cloud’s systems or air-gapped from the public internet to Google Sovereign Cloud customers, allowing organizations to leverage the power of Google’s AI services in their own data center or at the edge.

Orange operates communications and digital services in 26 countries around the world. To achieve its goals of bringing AI capabilities into each of the regions it serves, Orange required a secure solution to enhance cloud services at a local level, while meeting specific local regulatory requirements around security and data residency. Google Cloud worked with Orange from the concept stage onwards to co-design its Google Distributed Cloud (GDC) deployment, which allows Orange to establish a local cloud that delivers heightened resilience, particularly in challenging environments, while optimizing performance and reducing latency for critical workloads.

At this year’s Google Cloud Next, we announced a host of enhancements to GDC, including Managed GDC Providers who sell GDC as a managed service to end users alongside operation, design, migration and delivery, and deployment services. Partners including Clarence, T-Systems, and WWT are already delivering sovereign solutions to customers as Managed GDC Providers.

Learn more and take the next step

Our European customers continue to benefit from Google Sovereign Cloud’s secure-by-design foundation, rapid technology and service innovation, and choice of controls that enable them to balance security, control, and risk.

To learn more about how Google Sovereign Cloud can help your organization meet digital sovereignty requirements, join us at an upcoming EMEA Cloud Summit Series event in your area and access our free Digital Sovereignty Explorer online tool to receive a personalized report on a range of potentially applicable sovereign cloud solutions with additional reference material and recommendations.