New research reveals while nearly all enterprises (98%) are prioritizing digital sovereignty, just over half (52%) are actively taking steps to achieve it – highlighting a growing gap between ambition and execution.
SUSE has released insights from 309 IT leaders across France, Germany, India, Japan and the U.S. SUSE’s Navigating Digital Resilience report explores how organizations are redefining digital resilience in the age of AI, where pressure to innovate is accelerating faster than the foundational infrastructure required to support it.
“Organizations are often forced to choose between accelerating AI and maintaining digital sovereignty, but it’s a false tradeoff,” said Margaret Dawson, Chief Marketing Officer, SUSE. “Sovereign AI makes it possible to achieve both, embedding control, compliance and innovation into the same foundation.”
The Sovereignty Paradox: Urgency Outpaces Action
While digital sovereignty is widely recognized as essential to AI, many organizations remain early in their journey. The race to adopt AI reveals a clear tension between priority and readiness.
- Gap between ambition and execution: Nearly all respondents (98%) say digital sovereignty is a priority, yet only 52% are taking action. By country:
- 62% of respondents in India say digital sovereignty is a genuine strategic priority they are actively investing, followed 57% in both Germany and Japan, 52% in the U.S. and 39% in France
- Factor in determining vendors: 45% included sovereignty in recent RFPs and 42% ultimately selected vendors based on it.
- External pressure as the catalyst: 41% say they only act on sovereignty when required by customers or regulation, suggesting external pressure remains the primary catalyst.
AI is Driving Resilience and Risk
AI is emerging as both the catalyst for digital resilience and a source of increased complexity, forcing organizations to rethink control over data, models and infrastructure.
- 64% of IT leaders say AI transparency – control over model training and AI provenance – will be the top driver of digital resilience in the next five years.
- Even with an unexpected 20% budget increase, organizations overwhelmingly prioritize AI over sovereignty – signaling that pressure to adopt AI may be outpacing efforts to manage the risks it introduces.
Defining Digital Resilience: Control as the Common Thread
While definitions of digital resilience vary, organizations are converging around a core principle: control. Resilience is no longer just about protection, but about maintaining control in increasingly complex, AI-driven environments.
- Top priorities for achieving resilience include cybersecurity and threat detection (63%) and multi-cloud or hybrid diversification (52%).
- Continuous monitoring (44%) and backup and recovery (45%) also rank as critical components of resilience strategies.
Regional Divide Highlights Maturity Gap
Adoption and attitudes toward digital resilience vary by region, with some markets moving faster from strategy to execution.
- In the U.S., 61% of respondents are optimistic about digital resilience and 41% already have a formal digital sovereignty strategy in place.
- Meanwhile, more mature regulatory environments like Germany and Japan show different prioritization patterns, reflecting varying stages of adoption.
Hyperscaler Tension: Scale vs. Sovereignty
Enterprises continue to rely heavily on hyperscalers, even as sovereignty concerns grow.
- 65% of respondents say hyperscalers are relevant for supporting sovereign workloads.
This creates a balancing act between the scale and convenience of global providers and the need for jurisdictional control, driving demand for open, interoperable solutions and regional ecosystems.
SUSE addresses these challenges directly through its open source infrastructure portfolio — including SUSE Linux, SUSE Rancher Prime, and SUSE AI — designed to give enterprises full control over their data, models, and infrastructure without hyperscaler dependency.
