Sovereignty in Practice Study 2026 – Take Part Now

From DevOps to Digital Sovereignty

Over the past years, DevOps, platform engineering, and cloud-native technologies have fundamentally changed how organisations build and operate digital services. What originally started as a discussion about speed, automation, and efficiency has increasingly become a question of control, responsibility, and long-term resilience.

This shift became clearly visible in our DevOps studies. Technical maturity alone is no longer sufficient. Organisations are now asking more fundamental questions: Where does our data actually reside? Who controls our platforms? And how do regulatory, legal, and geopolitical conditions affect day-to-day IT and operations?

This is exactly where the Sovereignty in Practice Study 2026 comes in.

👉 Go directly to the survey.

What we learned from the DevOps Study

The DevOps Study showed broad adoption of cloud-native approaches, automation, and platform models across many industries. At the same time, recurring challenges became clearly apparent:

• growing dependencies on a small number of providers
• increasing regulatory pressure, especially in regulated environments
• tension between agility, compliance, and long-term control
• uncertainty about how much digital sovereignty is realistic and achievable

Digital sovereignty repeatedly emerged as a key topic – but often more as an abstract concept than as an established operational practice.

Why a dedicated sovereignty study

Together with Zühlke, we at VSHN decided to take the next step.

Instead of treating digital sovereignty as a side topic, the Sovereignty in Practice Study 2026 deliberately places it at the centre. The goal is not to provide a theoretical ideal definition, but to understand how organisations implement digital sovereignty in practice today.

The study focuses on questions such as:

• How do regulatory and economic constraints shape real-world architectures?
• How are decisions about data, workloads, and providers made?
• How are these decisions enforced organisationally and technically?
• Where are dependencies consciously accepted – and why?

From strategy to lived practice

Digital sovereignty is often discussed at a strategic level. In practice, however, it manifests in very concrete decisions – such as cloud contracts, platform architectures, operating models, and governance structures.

The study is conducted via a short online survey and is intentionally designed to be practical and experience-based. Responses should reflect the organisation’s perspective. If certain aspects are unclear or not yet decided, selecting “Not sure” is a fully valid and important response.

Who the study is for

The Sovereignty in Practice Study is aimed at organisations operating digital platforms or business-critical workloads – particularly in regulated sectors such as healthcare, financial services, public sector, and critical infrastructure.

Whether digital sovereignty is already strategically anchored or only emerging as an operational concern, every perspective contributes to building a realistic and meaningful overall picture.

Participate in the study now

• Time required: approximately 5-7 minutes
• Format: online survey
• Participation deadline: March 31, 2026

For the purpose of the study, digital sovereignty refers to an organisation’s ability to make and enforce decisions about data, workloads, and providers under its regulatory and business constraints.

👉 Participate in the Sovereignty in Practice Study 2026